Federal Act
on Financial Market Infrastructures and Market Conduct in Securities and Derivatives Trading
(Financial Market Infrastructure Act, FinMIA)

¹ This Act gov­erns the or­gan­isa­tion and op­er­a­tion of fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures, and the con­duct of fin­an­cial mar­ket par­ti­cipants in se­cur­it­ies and de­riv­at­ives trad­ing.

² It aims to en­sure the prop­er func­tion­ing and trans­par­ency of se­cur­it­ies and de­riv­at­ives mar­kets, the sta­bil­ity of the fin­an­cial sys­tem, the pro­tec­tion of fin­an­cial mar­ket par­ti­cipants and equal treat­ment of in­vestors.

For the pur­poses of this Act, the fol­low­ing terms shall have the fol­low­ing mean­ings:

a.

Fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture:

1.

a stock ex­change (Art. 26 let. b);

2

a mul­ti­lat­er­al trad­ing fa­cil­ity (Art. 26 let. c);

3.

a cent­ral coun­ter­party (Art. 48);

4.

a cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory (Art. 61);

5.

a trade re­pos­it­ory (Art. 74);

5a.³

a trad­ing fa­cil­ity for DLT se­cur­it­ies (DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity; Art. 73a);

6.

a pay­ment sys­tem (Art. 81).

b.⁴

Se­cur­it­ies: stand­ard­ised cer­ti­fic­ated and un­cer­ti­fic­ated se­cur­it­ies, in par­tic­u­lar un­cer­ti­fic­ated se­cur­it­ies in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 973c of the Code of Ob­lig­a­tions⁵ (CO) and ledger-based se­cur­it­ies in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 973d of the CO, as well as de­riv­at­ives and in­ter­me­di­ated se­cur­it­ies, which are suit­able for mass trad­ing.

b^bis.⁶

Dis­trib­uted ledger tech­no­logy se­cur­it­ies (DLT se­cur­it­ies): se­cur­it­ies in the form of:

1.

Ledger-based se­cur­it­ies (Art. 973d CO); or

2.

oth­er un­cer­ti­fic­ated se­cur­it­ies that are held in dis­trib­uted elec­tron­ic re­gisters and use tech­no­lo­gic­al pro­cesses to give the cred­it­ors, but not the ob­lig­or, power of dis­pos­al over the un­cer­ti­fic­ated se­cur­ity.

c.

De­riv­at­ives or de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions: fin­an­cial con­tracts whose value de­pends on one or sev­er­al un­der­ly­ing as­sets and which are not cash trans­ac­tions.

d.

Par­ti­cipant: any per­son mak­ing dir­ect use of fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture ser­vices.

e.

In­dir­ect par­ti­cipant: any per­son mak­ing use of fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture ser­vices in­dir­ectly via a par­ti­cipant.

f.

List­ing: the ad­mis­sion of a se­cur­ity to trad­ing on a stock ex­change in ac­cord­ance with a stand­ard­ised pro­ced­ure whereby the stock ex­change's re­quire­ments re­gard­ing is­suers and se­cur­it­ies are be­ing veri­fied.

g.

Clear­ing: pro­cessing steps between the con­clu­sion and the set­tle­ment of a trans­ac­tion, in par­tic­u­lar:

the entry, re­con­cili­ation and con­firm­a­tion of the trans­ac­tion data;

the as­sump­tion of ob­lig­a­tions by a cent­ral coun­ter­party or oth­er risk mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures;

the net­ting of trans­ac­tions;

the re­con­cili­ation and con­firm­a­tion of out­stand­ing pay­ments and se­cur­it­ies trans­fers.

h.

Set­tle­ment: ful­fil­ment of the ob­lig­a­tions entered in­to upon con­clu­sion of the trans­ac­tion, namely by trans­fer­ring funds or se­cur­it­ies.

i.

Pub­lictakeoverof­fers:of­fers to pur­chase or ex­change shares, par­ti­cip­a­tion cer­ti­fic­ates, profit-shar­ing cer­ti­fic­ates or oth­er par­ti­cip­a­tion rights (equity se­cur­it­ies) which are made pub­licly to the hold­ers of shares or oth­er equity se­cur­it­ies.

j.⁷

In­sider in­form­a­tion: con­fid­en­tial in­form­a­tion whose dis­clos­ure would sig­ni­fic­antly af­fect the prices of se­cur­it­ies ad­mit­ted to trad­ing on a trad­ing ven­ue or DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity which has its re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land.

¹ The fol­low­ing are sub­ject to Art­icles 88 to 92 provided they are not sub­ject to the bank­ruptcy jur­is­dic­tion of the Swiss Fin­an­cial Mar­ket Su­per­vis­ory Au­thor­ity (FINMA) with­in the scope of the su­per­vi­sion of the in­di­vidu­al in­sti­tu­tion:

a.

group par­ent com­pan­ies of a fin­an­cial group which have their re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land;

b.

those group com­pan­ies which have their re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land and per­form sig­ni­fic­ant func­tions for activ­it­ies which re­quire au­thor­isa­tion (sig­ni­fic­ant group com­pan­ies).

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall set the cri­ter­ia for as­sess­ing sig­ni­fic­ance.

³ FINMA shall identi­fy sig­ni­fic­ant group com­pan­ies and keep a pub­licly ac­cess­ible list of said com­pan­ies.

¹ Fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures re­quire au­thor­isa­tion from FINMA.

² A pay­ment sys­tem re­quires au­thor­isa­tion from FINMA only if this is ne­ces­sary for the prop­er func­tion­ing of the fin­an­cial mar­ket or the pro­tec­tion of fin­an­cial mar­ket par­ti­cipants and if the pay­ment sys­tem is not op­er­ated by a bank.

³ Fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures op­er­ated by the Swiss Na­tion­al Bank (SNB) or on its be­half are not sub­ject to FINMA au­thor­isa­tion and su­per­vi­sion with­in the scope of this activ­ity.

⁴ The fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture may be entered in the com­mer­cial re­gister only after FINMA has is­sued the au­thor­isa­tion.

Any­one who meets the con­di­tions set out in this sec­tion and the sup­ple­ment­ary con­di­tions that ap­ply to in­di­vidu­al fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures is en­titled to au­thor­isa­tion.

Sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures (Art. 22) have to meet the re­quire­ments set out in sec­tion 2 in ad­di­tion to the con­di­tions de­tailed in Art­icle 5.

¹ The fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture shall no­ti­fy FINMA of any changes in the facts on which its au­thor­isa­tion or ap­prov­al is based.

² If the changes are of ma­ter­i­al sig­ni­fic­ance, the fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture must ob­tain pri­or au­thor­isa­tion or ap­prov­al from FINMA in or­der to pur­sue its activ­ity.

³ This pro­vi­sion ap­plies by ana­logy to re­cog­nised for­eign fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures.

¹ The fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture must be a leg­al en­tity un­der Swiss law and have its re­gistered of­fice and head of­fice in Switzer­land.

² It must es­tab­lish ap­pro­pri­ate cor­por­ate man­age­ment rules and be or­gan­ised in such a way that it can ful­fil its stat­utory du­ties. In par­tic­u­lar, it must des­ig­nate spe­cif­ic bod­ies re­spons­ible for its busi­ness man­age­ment, on the one hand, and for its over­all man­age­ment, su­per­vi­sion and con­trol on the oth­er, and define the scope of these bod­ies' re­spect­ive powers in such a way as to en­sure prop­er and in­de­pend­ent su­per­vi­sion of busi­ness man­age­ment. It shall set out the rel­ev­ant tasks and au­thor­it­ies in its art­icles of in­cor­por­a­tion and or­gan­isa­tion­al reg­u­la­tions.

³ It shall identi­fy, meas­ure, con­trol and mon­it­or its risks and or­gan­ise an ef­fect­ive in­tern­al con­trol sys­tem. In par­tic­u­lar, it shall es­tab­lish an in­tern­al audit func­tion that is in­de­pend­ent of the busi­ness man­age­ment body and a com­pli­ance de­part­ment that is sep­ar­ate from op­er­at­ing busi­ness units.

¹ The fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture and the per­sons re­spons­ible for its ad­min­is­tra­tion and man­age­ment must provide the guar­an­tee of ir­re­proach­able busi­ness con­duct.⁸

² Moreover, the per­sons re­spons­ible for the ad­min­is­tra­tion and man­age­ment of the fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture must en­joy a good repu­ta­tion and have the spe­cial­ist qual­i­fic­a­tions re­quired for their func­tions.

³ Qual­i­fied par­ti­cipants in a fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture must also en­joy a good repu­ta­tion and en­sure that their in­flu­ence is not det­ri­ment­al to prudent and sound busi­ness activ­ity.

⁴ Per­sons who dir­ectly or in­dir­ectly hold at least 10% of the share cap­it­al or votes or who can sig­ni­fic­antly in­flu­ence its busi­ness activ­ity in an­oth­er man­ner are deemed to be qual­i­fied par­ti­cipants in a fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture.

⁵ Each per­son must no­ti­fy FINMA be­fore dir­ectly or in­dir­ectly ac­quir­ing or dis­pos­ing of a qual­i­fied par­ti­cip­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 4 in a fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture or­gan­ised un­der Swiss law. This no­ti­fic­a­tion duty also ap­plies if a qual­i­fied par­ti­cip­a­tion is in­creased or re­duced in such a way as to reach, ex­ceed or fall be­low the thresholds of 20%, 33% or 50% of the share cap­it­al or votes.

⁶ The fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture shall no­ti­fy FINMA of the per­sons who meet the con­di­tions of para­graph 5 as soon as it be­comes aware of the same. It must sub­mit a list of its qual­i­fied par­ti­cipants to FINMA at least once a year.

¹ A leg­al en­tity may op­er­ate only one fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture. The fore­go­ing does not ap­ply to the op­er­a­tion of a mul­ti­lat­er­al trad­ing fa­cil­ity by a stock ex­change.

² The pro­vi­sion of an­cil­lary ser­vices sub­ject to au­thor­isa­tion or ap­prov­al by vir­tue of Art­icle 1 of the Fin­an­cial Mar­ket Su­per­vi­sion Act of 22 June 2007⁹ (fin­an­cial mar­ket le­gis­la­tion) must be au­thor­ised or ap­proved by FINMA and must be in com­pli­ance with the ad­di­tion­al au­thor­isa­tion con­di­tions.

³ If the pro­vi­sion of an­cil­lary ser­vices not sub­ject to au­thor­isa­tion or ap­prov­al by vir­tue of fin­an­cial mar­ket le­gis­la­tion in­creases the risks of a fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture, FINMA may re­quire or­gan­isa­tion­al meas­ures or the es­tab­lish­ment of ad­di­tion­al own funds and suf­fi­cient li­quid­ity.

¹ If a fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture wishes to out­source es­sen­tial ser­vices such as risk man­age­ment, pri­or ap­prov­al must be ob­tained from FINMA. FINMA must con­sult the SNB be­fore­hand if the fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture in ques­tion is con­sidered sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant by the SNB.

² The fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture shall set out the re­cip­roc­al rights and du­ties in a writ­ten agree­ment with the ser­vice pro­vider.

³ If a fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture out­sources ser­vices, it shall re­main re­spons­ible for com­pli­ance with the du­ties arising from this Act.

¹ The min­im­um cap­it­al of the fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture must be fully paid up.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall set the amount of the min­im­um cap­it­al.

¹ A fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture must have an ap­pro­pri­ate strategy to be able to main­tain or re­store op­er­a­tions in good time in the event of dis­rup­tions.

² If a fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture holds par­ti­cipants' as­sets and po­s­i­tions, it must es­tab­lish ap­pro­pri­ate pro­ced­ures to en­sure that these as­sets and po­s­i­tions can be trans­ferred or settled im­me­di­ately in the event of the with­draw­al or re­turn of au­thor­isa­tion.

¹ A fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture shall op­er­ate IT sys­tems which:

a.

en­sure ful­fil­ment of the du­ties arising from this Act and are ap­pro­pri­ate for its activ­it­ies;

b.

provide for ef­fect­ive emer­gency ar­range­ments; and

c.

en­sure the con­tinu­ity of its busi­ness activ­ity.

² It shall provide for meas­ures to pro­tect the in­teg­rity and con­fid­en­ti­al­ity of in­form­a­tion re­gard­ing its par­ti­cipants and their trans­ac­tions.

¹ If a fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture is part of a fin­an­cial group, FINMA may make its au­thor­isa­tion con­tin­gent upon the ex­ist­ence of ap­pro­pri­ate con­sol­id­ated su­per­vi­sion by a fin­an­cial mar­ket su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity.

² Two or more com­pan­ies are deemed to be a fin­an­cial group pur­su­ant to this Act if:

a.

at least one of them op­er­ates as a fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture;

b.

they op­er­ate primar­ily in the fin­an­cial sec­tor; and

c.

they form an eco­nom­ic unit or oth­er cir­cum­stances sug­gest that one or more of the com­pan­ies un­der in­di­vidu­al su­per­vi­sion is de jure or de facto ob­liged to provide as­sist­ance to group com­pan­ies.

³ The pro­vi­sions of the Bank­ing Act of 8 Novem­ber 1934¹⁰ ap­ply by ana­logy.

¹ The name of the fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture must not lead to con­fu­sion or de­cep­tion.

² The terms «stock ex­change», «mul­ti­lat­er­al trad­ing fa­cil­ity», «MTF», «cent­ral coun­ter­party», «CCP», «se­cur­it­ies set­tle­ment sys­tem», «SSS», «cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory», «CSD», «trade re­pos­it­ory", «TR», «DLT trad­ing sys­tem», «DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity and DLT ex­change» may be used in con­nec­tion with the pro­vi­sion of fin­an­cial ser­vices only to des­ig­nate a cor­res­pond­ing fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture sub­ject to this Act.¹¹

A fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture must no­ti­fy FINMA be­fore:

a.

es­tab­lish­ing, ac­quir­ing or clos­ing a for­eign sub­si­di­ary, branch or rep­res­ent­at­ive of­fice;

b.

ac­quir­ing or sur­ren­der­ing a qual­i­fied par­ti­cip­a­tion in a for­eign com­pany.

¹ A fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture shall en­sure fair and open ac­cess to its ser­vices.

² It may re­strict ac­cess to its ser­vices:

a.

if this in­creases safety or ef­fi­ciency and this ef­fect can­not be achieved with oth­er meas­ures; or

b.

if the fea­tures of the po­ten­tial par­ti­cipant could jeop­ard­ise the busi­ness op­er­a­tions of the fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture or its par­ti­cipants.

Fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures shall keep re­cords of the ser­vices provided, the pro­ced­ures and pro­cesses ap­plied and the activ­it­ies car­ried out, and shall re­tain all re­cords for ten years.

Fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures shall take ef­fect­ive or­gan­isa­tion­al meas­ures to identi­fy, pre­vent, settle and mon­it­or con­flicts of in­terest.

¹ A fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture shall reg­u­larly pub­lish all es­sen­tial in­form­a­tion for par­ti­cipants, is­suers and the gen­er­al pub­lic, spe­cific­ally:

a.

in­form­a­tion about its or­gan­isa­tion;

b.

the par­ti­cip­a­tion con­di­tions;

c.

the rights and du­ties of par­ti­cipants and is­suers.

² It shall take ac­count of re­cog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards in do­ing so.

¹ Cent­ral coun­ter­parties, cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­or­ies, pay­ment sys­tems and those DLT trad­ing fa­cil­it­ies that provide cent­ral cus­tody, clear­ing or set­tle­ment ser­vices are deemed to be sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant:¹²

a.

if their non-avail­ab­il­ity, arising in par­tic­u­lar from tech­nic­al or op­er­a­tion­al prob­lems or fin­an­cial dif­fi­culties, can lead to ser­i­ous losses, li­quid­ity short­falls or op­er­a­tion­al prob­lems for fin­an­cial in­ter­me­di­ar­ies or oth­er fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures, or can cause ser­i­ous dis­rup­tions on fin­an­cial mar­kets; or

b.

if in­di­vidu­al par­ti­cipants' pay­ment or de­liv­ery dif­fi­culties can spill over to oth­er par­ti­cipants or linked fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures and can cause these ser­i­ous losses, li­quid­ity short­falls or op­er­a­tion­al prob­lems, or can cause ser­i­ous dis­rup­tions on fin­an­cial mar­kets.

² A busi­ness pro­cess of a fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 is sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant:

a.

if its non-avail­ab­il­ity can cause ser­i­ous losses, li­quid­ity short­falls or op­er­a­tion­al prob­lems for fin­an­cial in­ter­me­di­ar­ies or oth­er fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures, or can cause ser­i­ous dis­rup­tions on fin­an­cial mar­kets; and

b.

if par­ti­cipants can­not sub­sti­tute the busi­ness pro­cess at short no­tice.

¹ Sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures must ful­fil spe­cial re­quire­ments in or­der to pro­tect against the risks they pose to the sta­bil­ity of the fin­an­cial sys­tem.

² The spe­cial re­quire­ments must take ac­count of re­cog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards. They can re­late to the con­trac­tu­al bases, the means of pay­ment used, risk man­age­ment, busi­ness con­tinu­ity and IT sys­tems.

³ The SNB shall reg­u­late the de­tails in an or­din­ance.

⁴ The SNB may, after con­sult­ing FINMA, waive the ob­lig­a­tion to meet the spe­cial re­quire­ments for a sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture re­gistered abroad which comes un­der SNB over­sight in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 19 para­graph 2 of the Swiss Na­tion­al Bank Act of 3 Oc­to­ber 2003¹³ (NBA):

if it is sub­ject to equi­val­ent su­per­vi­sion and over­sight abroad; and

if the com­pet­ent su­per­vis­ory and over­sight au­thor­it­ies co­oper­ate with the SNB in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 21 para­graph 2 of the NBA¹⁴.

¹ A sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture shall draw up a re­cov­ery plan that sets out the meas­ures it will use to en­sure its sta­bil­ity on a sus­tain­able basis in the event of a crisis and be able to main­tain its sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant busi­ness pro­cesses.

² FINMA shall draw up a res­ol­u­tion plan that de­scribes how the re­struc­tur­ing or wind­ing-up of a sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture that it has ordered can be car­ried out. It shall con­sult the SNB about the res­ol­u­tion plan.

³ A fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture shall provide FINMA with the re­cov­ery plan and the in­form­a­tion ne­ces­sary for draw­ing up a res­ol­u­tion plan.

⁴ It shall im­ple­ment the res­ol­u­tion plan meas­ures in a pre­par­at­ory man­ner if this is ne­ces­sary for the un­in­ter­rup­ted main­ten­ance of sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant busi­ness pro­cesses.

¹ FINMA shall in­form the SNB of au­thor­isa­tion re­quests sub­mit­ted by cent­ral coun­ter­parties, cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­or­ies, pay­ment sys­tems and those DLT trad­ing fa­cil­it­ies that provide cent­ral cus­tody, clear­ing or set­tle­ment ser­vices.¹⁵

² After con­sult­ing FINMA, the SNB shall des­ig­nate by way of an or­der the sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures and their sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant busi­ness pro­cesses in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 22. It shall also define by way of an or­der which spe­cial re­quire­ments in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 23 the in­di­vidu­al sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures have to ful­fil and shall as­sess their com­pli­ance.

³ If a sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture ful­fils the spe­cial re­quire­ments, FINMA shall grant au­thor­isa­tion if the oth­er au­thor­isa­tion con­di­tions are also met.

⁴ FINMA shall ap­prove a sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture's sta­bil­isa­tion plan in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 24 after con­sult­ing the SNB.

⁵ If the SNB con­cludes that a fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture is not sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant, it shall in­form FINMA. If the gen­er­al au­thor­isa­tion con­di­tions are met, FINMA shall grant au­thor­isa­tion.

⁶ The pro­ced­ure ap­plies by ana­logy to re­quests for re­cog­ni­tion sub­mit­ted by for­eign cent­ral coun­ter­parties.

For the pur­poses of this Act:

a.

trad­ing ven­ue means a stock ex­change or a mul­ti­lat­er­al trad­ing fa­cil­ity;

b.

stock ex­change means an in­sti­tu­tion for mul­ti­lat­er­al se­cur­it­ies trad­ing where se­cur­it­ies are lis­ted, whose pur­pose is the sim­ul­tan­eous ex­change of bids between sev­er­al par­ti­cipants and the con­clu­sion of con­tracts based on non-dis­cre­tion­ary rules;

c.

mul­ti­lat­er­al trad­ing fa­cil­ity means an in­sti­tu­tion for mul­ti­lat­er­al se­cur­it­ies trad­ing whose pur­pose is the sim­ul­tan­eous ex­change of bids between sev­er­al par­ti­cipants and the con­clu­sion of con­tracts based on non-dis­cre­tion­ary rules without list­ing se­cur­it­ies.

¹ The trad­ing ven­ue shall es­tab­lish un­der FINMA su­per­vi­sion its own reg­u­lat­ory and su­per­vis­ory or­gan­isa­tion which is ap­pro­pri­ate for its activ­ity.

² The reg­u­lat­ory and su­per­vis­ory tasks del­eg­ated to the trad­ing ven­ue must be car­ried out by in­de­pend­ent bod­ies. The dir­ect­ors of these bod­ies must:

a.

provide the guar­an­tee of ir­re­proach­able busi­ness con­duct;

b.

en­joy a good repu­ta­tion; and

c.

have the spe­cial­ist qual­i­fic­a­tions re­quired for their func­tions.

³ The se­lec­tion of the dir­ect­ors un­der para­graph 2 re­quires the ap­prov­al of FINMA.

⁴ The trad­ing ven­ue shall sub­mit its reg­u­la­tions and their amend­ments to FINMA for ap­prov­al.

¹ The trad­ing ven­ue shall is­sue reg­u­la­tions for the or­gan­isa­tion of or­derly and trans­par­ent trad­ing.

² It shall re­gister all of its or­ders and trans­ac­tions in chro­no­lo­gic­al or­der, as well as the trans­ac­tions re­por­ted to it. In par­tic­u­lar, it shall in­dic­ate the time, the iden­tity of the par­ti­cipants, the se­cur­it­ies traded and their num­ber or nom­in­al value, as well as their price.

¹ The trad­ing ven­ue shall pub­lish the bid and of­fer prices for shares and oth­er se­cur­it­ies in real time, as well as the sizes of the trad­ing po­s­i­tions at these prices (pre-trad­ing trans­par­ency).

² Moreover, it shall im­me­di­ately pub­lish in­form­a­tion on the trans­ac­tions car­ried out on the trad­ing ven­ue and on the trans­ac­tions con­duc­ted out­side of the trad­ing ven­ue re­por­ted to it for all se­cur­it­ies ad­mit­ted to trad­ing (post-trad­ing trans­par­ency). In par­tic­u­lar, the price, volume and time of the trans­ac­tions must be pub­lished.

³ Tak­ing ac­count of re­cog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards and leg­al de­vel­op­ments abroad, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine:

a.

the oth­er se­cur­it­ies sub­ject to pre-trade trans­par­ency;

b.

ex­cep­tions with re­gard to pre- and post-trade trans­par­ency, par­tic­u­larly in re­la­tion to se­cur­it­ies trans­ac­tions in­volving large volumes or that are ex­ecuted by the SNB.

¹ A trad­ing ven­ue which op­er­ates a tech­nic­al plat­form must have a trad­ing fa­cil­ity which guar­an­tees or­derly trad­ing even in the event of in­tense trad­ing activ­ity.

2 It shall take ef­fect­ive meas­ures to pre­vent dis­rup­tions to its trad­ing fa­cil­ity.

¹ The trad­ing ven­ue shall su­per­vise price form­a­tion and the trans­ac­tions con­duc­ted on the trad­ing ven­ue so that in­sider trad­ing, price and mar­ket ma­nip­u­la­tion and oth­er vi­ol­a­tions of stat­utory and reg­u­lat­ory pro­vi­sions can be de­tec­ted. For this pur­pose, it shall also re­view the trans­ac­tions con­duc­ted out­side of the trad­ing ven­ue that are re­por­ted to it or are brought to its at­ten­tion in any oth­er way.

² In the event of sus­pec­ted vi­ol­a­tions of the law or oth­er ir­reg­u­lar­it­ies, the body re­spons­ible for su­per­vising trad­ing (trad­ing su­per­vis­ory body) shall no­ti­fy FINMA. If the vi­ol­a­tions of the law in­volve crim­in­al of­fences, it shall also in­form the com­pet­ent pro­sec­u­tion au­thor­ity without delay.

³ FINMA, the com­pet­ent pro­sec­u­tion au­thor­ity, the Takeover Board and the trad­ing su­per­vis­ory body shall ex­change in­form­a­tion which they re­quire with­in the con­text of their col­lab­or­a­tion and in or­der to carry out their tasks. They shall use the in­form­a­tion re­ceived solely to carry out their re­spect­ive tasks.

¹ Swiss su­per­vis­ory bod­ies for vari­ous trad­ing ven­ues shall reg­u­late the free, re­cip­roc­al ex­change of trad­ing data by agree­ment, provided that on the trad­ing ven­ues in ques­tion:

a.

identic­al se­cur­it­ies are ad­mit­ted to trad­ing; or

b.

se­cur­it­ies are ad­mit­ted to trad­ing which in­flu­ence the pri­cing of se­cur­it­ies that are ad­mit­ted to trad­ing on the oth­er trad­ing ven­ue.

² They shall use the data re­ceived solely to carry out their re­spect­ive tasks.

³ Swiss trad­ing su­per­vis­ory bod­ies may agree to the re­cip­roc­al ex­change of in­form­a­tion with for­eign trad­ing su­per­vis­ory bod­ies, provided that:

a.

the con­di­tions set out in para­graph 1 are ful­filled; and

b.

the for­eign trad­ing su­per­vis­ory body in ques­tion is sub­ject to a leg­al duty of con­fid­en­ti­al­ity.

¹ When a stock ex­change sus­pends trad­ing in a se­cur­ity lis­ted on it at the ini­ti­at­ive of the is­suer or due to ex­traordin­ary cir­cum­stances, it shall im­me­di­ately pub­lish its de­cision.

² If trad­ing in a se­cur­ity is sus­pen­ded, it shall also be sus­pen­ded on all of the oth­er trad­ing ven­ues where the se­cur­ity in ques­tion is ad­mit­ted to trad­ing.

¹ The trad­ing ven­ue shall is­sue reg­u­la­tions on the ad­mis­sion, du­ties and ex­clu­sion of par­ti­cipants, thereby ob­serving in par­tic­u­lar the prin­ciple of equal treat­ment.

² The fol­low­ing may be ad­mit­ted as par­ti­cipants in a stock ex­change or a mul­ti­lat­er­al trad­ing fa­cil­ity:

a.¹⁶

se­cur­it­ies firms in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 2 let­ter d of the Fin­an­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act of 15 June 2018¹⁷ (Fin­IA);

b.

oth­er parties su­per­vised by FINMA in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 3 of the Fin­an­cial Mar­ket Su­per­vi­sion Act of 22 June 2007¹⁸ (FIN­MASA), provided that the trad­ing ven­ue en­sures that they ful­fil equi­val­ent tech­nic­al and op­er­a­tion­al con­di­tions to se­cur­it­ies firms;¹⁹

c.

for­eign par­ti­cipants au­thor­ised by FINMA in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 40;

d.

the SNB.

¹ The stock ex­change shall is­sue reg­u­la­tions on the ad­mis­sion of se­cur­it­ies to trad­ing, and par­tic­u­larly for the list­ing of se­cur­it­ies.

² The reg­u­la­tions shall take ac­count of re­cog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards and in par­tic­u­lar shall con­tain pro­vi­sions on:

a.²⁰

the re­quire­ments that ap­ply to the se­cur­it­ies and the is­suers and the du­ties of the is­suer, its rep­res­ent­at­ives and third parties in con­nec­tion with the list­ing or ad­mis­sion of se­cur­it­ies to trad­ing;

b.

the pub­lic­a­tion of in­form­a­tion on which in­vestors rely for as­sess­ing the char­ac­ter­ist­ics of se­cur­it­ies and the qual­ity of the is­suer;

c.

the du­ties of the is­suer, its rep­res­ent­at­ives and third parties for the en­tire dur­a­tion of the list­ing or ad­mis­sion of se­cur­it­ies to trad­ing;

d.

the ob­lig­a­tion, re­gard­ing the ad­mis­sion of equity se­cur­it­ies and bonds, to com­ply with Art­icles 7 and 8²¹ of the Fed­er­al Act of 16 Decem­ber 2005²² on the Li­cens­ing and Over­sight of Aud­it­ors (AOA).

^2bis The pro­spect­us re­quire­ment is gov­erned ex­clus­ively by Art­icles 35–57 of the Fin­an­cial Ser­vices Act of 15 June 2018²³.²⁴

³ The stock ex­change shall mon­it­or com­pli­ance with the reg­u­la­tions and im­pose the sanc­tions provided for con­trac­tu­ally in the event of vi­ol­a­tions.

¹ The mul­ti­lat­er­al trad­ing fa­cil­ity shall is­sue reg­u­la­tions on the ad­mis­sion of se­cur­it­ies to trad­ing. In par­tic­u­lar, it shall set out therein the re­quire­ments for the se­cur­it­ies and the is­suers or third parties in con­nec­tion with ad­mis­sion to trad­ing.²⁵

² It shall mon­it­or com­pli­ance with the reg­u­la­tions and im­pose the sanc­tions provided for con­trac­tu­ally in the event of vi­ol­a­tions.

³ The pro­spect­us re­quire­ment is gov­erned ex­clus­ively by Art­icles 35–57 of the Fin­an­cial Ser­vices Act of 15 June 2018²⁶.²⁷

¹ The trad­ing ven­ue shall ap­point an in­de­pend­ent ap­peal body to which ap­plic­a­tion may be made:

a.

when a par­ti­cipant is re­fused ad­mis­sion;

b.

when a se­cur­ity is re­fused ad­mis­sion;

c.

when a par­ti­cipant is ex­cluded;

d.

when a se­cur­ity is del­is­ted.

² It shall gov­ern the or­gan­isa­tion of the ap­peal body and its pro­ced­ures.

³ The or­gan­isa­tion, the pro­ced­ur­al rules and the ap­point­ment of the mem­bers of the ap­peal body re­quire the ap­prov­al of FINMA.

⁴ An ac­tion may be brought be­fore the civil court after the ap­peal pro­ced­ure has been con­duc­ted.

The par­ti­cipants ad­mit­ted to a trad­ing ven­ue shall keep a re­cord of the or­ders and trans­ac­tions they carry out, provid­ing all the de­tails ne­ces­sary for over­see­ing and su­per­vising their activ­ity.

¹ The par­ti­cipants ad­mit­ted to a trad­ing ven­ue must re­port all of the in­form­a­tion ne­ces­sary for trans­par­ent se­cur­it­ies trad­ing.

² FINMA shall de­term­ine which in­form­a­tion is to be re­por­ted to whom and in what form.

³ The SNB is not sub­ject to the re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tion with­in the frame­work of car­ry­ing out its pub­lic du­ties.

¹ FINMA shall grant au­thor­isa­tion to a for­eign par­ti­cipant wish­ing to par­ti­cip­ate in a Swiss trad­ing ven­ue but which has no re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land:

a.

if it is sub­ject to ap­pro­pri­ate reg­u­la­tion and su­per­vi­sion;

b.

if it ob­serves a code of con­duct and re­cord-keep­ing and re­port­ing du­ties equi­val­ent to the du­ties set out in Swiss reg­u­la­tions;

c.

if it en­sures that its activ­it­ies are sep­ar­ate from the activ­it­ies of any au­thor­ised Swiss units; and

d.

if the com­pet­ent su­per­vis­ory au­thor­it­ies:

1.

do not have any ob­jec­tions to the par­ti­cipant's activ­ity in Switzer­land,

2.

provide FINMA with ad­min­is­trat­ive as­sist­ance.

² FINMA may re­ject au­thor­isa­tion if the state in which the for­eign par­ti­cipant has its re­gistered of­fice does not grant Swiss par­ti­cipants ac­tu­al ac­cess to its mar­kets or does not of­fer them the same com­pet­it­ive op­por­tun­it­ies as those gran­ted to do­mest­ic trad­ing par­ti­cipants. Any de­vi­at­ing in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments are re­served.

³ A for­eign par­ti­cipant that already par­ti­cip­ates in a Swiss trad­ing ven­ue shall in­form FINMA if it wishes to par­ti­cip­ate in an­oth­er Swiss trad­ing ven­ue. In this case, the for­eign su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity has to con­firm that it has no ob­jec­tion to the ex­pan­sion of the for­eign par­ti­cipant's activ­ity in Switzer­land.

⁴ FINMA au­thor­isa­tion is not re­quired for par­ti­cip­a­tion in mon­et­ary policy trans­ac­tions with the SNB.

¹ Trad­ing ven­ues dom­i­ciled abroad must ob­tain re­cog­ni­tion from FINMA be­fore grant­ing Swiss par­ti­cipants su­per­vised by FINMA dir­ect ac­cess to their fa­cil­it­ies.

² FINMA shall grant re­cog­ni­tion:

a.

if the for­eign trad­ing ven­ue is sub­ject to ap­pro­pri­ate reg­u­la­tion and su­per­vi­sion; and

b.

if the com­pet­ent for­eign su­per­vis­ory au­thor­it­ies:

1.

do not have any ob­jec­tions to the cross-bor­der activ­ity of the for­eign trad­ing ven­ue,

2.

guar­an­tee that they will in­form FINMA if they de­tect vi­ol­a­tions of the law or oth­er ir­reg­u­lar­it­ies on the part of Swiss par­ti­cipants, and

3.

provide FINMA with ad­min­is­trat­ive as­sist­ance.

³ A for­eign trad­ing ven­ue is deemed re­cog­nised if FINMA finds that:

a.

the state in which the trad­ing ven­ue has its re­gistered of­fice reg­u­lates and su­per­vises its trad­ing ven­ues ad­equately; and

b.

the con­di­tions in para­graph 2 let­ter b are met.

⁴ FINMA may re­fuse re­cog­ni­tion if the state in which the for­eign trad­ing ven­ue has its re­gistered of­fice does not grant Swiss trad­ing ven­ues ac­tu­al ac­cess to its mar­kets or does not of­fer them the same com­pet­it­ive op­por­tun­it­ies as those gran­ted to do­mest­ic trad­ing ven­ues. Any de­vi­at­ing in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments are re­served.

An or­gan­ised trad­ing fa­cil­ity is an es­tab­lish­ment for:

a.

mul­ti­lat­er­al trad­ing in se­cur­it­ies or oth­er fin­an­cial in­stru­ments whose pur­pose is the ex­change of bids and the con­clu­sion of con­tracts based on dis­cre­tion­ary rules;

b.

mul­ti­lat­er­al trad­ing in fin­an­cial in­stru­ments oth­er than se­cur­it­ies whose pur­pose is the ex­change of bids and the con­clu­sion of con­tracts based on non-dis­cre­tion­ary rules;

c.

bi­lat­er­al trad­ing in se­cur­it­ies or oth­er fin­an­cial in­stru­ments whose pur­pose is the ex­change of bids.

¹ Any­one who op­er­ates an or­gan­ised trad­ing fa­cil­ity re­quires au­thor­isa­tion as a bank, se­cur­it­ies deal­er or DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity, or au­thor­isa­tion or re­cog­ni­tion as a trad­ing ven­ue.²⁸

² No au­thor­isa­tion is re­quired for the op­er­a­tion of an or­gan­ised trad­ing fa­cil­ity with­in a fin­an­cial group if this is con­duc­ted via a leg­al en­tity that:

a.

is con­trolled dir­ectly by a fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture; and

b.

is sub­ject to con­sol­id­ated FINMA su­per­vi­sion.

Any­one who op­er­ates an or­gan­ised trad­ing fa­cil­ity must:

a.

do this sep­ar­ately from the oth­er busi­ness activ­it­ies;

b.

take ef­fect­ive or­gan­isa­tion­al meas­ures to identi­fy, pre­vent, settle and mon­it­or con­flicts of in­terest;

c.

en­sure that cli­ent in­terests are com­pre­hens­ively pro­tec­ted when con­duct­ing pro­pri­et­ary trans­ac­tions on the or­gan­ised trad­ing fa­cil­ity op­er­ated by him.

¹ Any­one who op­er­ates an or­gan­ised trad­ing fa­cil­ity must en­sure that this guar­an­tees or­derly trad­ing even in the event of in­tense trad­ing activ­ity.

² This per­son shall take ef­fect­ive meas­ures to pre­vent dis­rup­tions to the trad­ing fa­cil­ity.

¹ Any­one who op­er­ates an or­gan­ised trad­ing fa­cil­ity shall pub­lish in­form­a­tion on the trans­ac­tions car­ried out on the trad­ing fa­cil­ity, in par­tic­u­lar the price, volume and time of the trans­ac­tions.

² Tak­ing re­cog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards and for­eign leg­al de­vel­op­ments in­to ac­count, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late ex­emp­tions to this pub­lic­a­tion duty, par­tic­u­larly in re­la­tion to se­cur­it­ies trans­ac­tions in­volving large volumes or that are ex­ecuted by the SNB.

³ It may make pro­vi­sion, in line with re­cog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards, for ex­tend­ing the pub­lic­a­tion duty to pre-trad­ing trans­par­ency.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ad­opt pro­vi­sions which de­vi­ate from this Act for ex­changes where elec­tri­city de­riv­at­ives are traded and for trad­ing on such ex­changes in or­der to take ac­count of the spe­cif­ic fea­tures of the elec­tri­city mar­ket, par­tic­u­larly so as to safe­guard the pub­lic in­terest in a se­cure power sup­ply.

² It may em­power FINMA to is­sue pro­vi­sions, in agree­ment with the Fed­er­al Elec­tri­city Com­mis­sion, in areas with a re­stric­ted scope, namely those that are primar­ily tech­nic­al.

A cent­ral coun­ter­party is an en­tity based on uni­form rules and pro­ced­ures that in­ter­poses it­self between the coun­ter­parties to a se­cur­it­ies trans­ac­tion or oth­er con­tract in­volving fin­an­cial in­stru­ments, thereby be­com­ing the buy­er to every seller and the seller to every buy­er.

¹ The cent­ral coun­ter­party shall re­quire its par­ti­cipants to provide ap­pro­pri­ate col­lat­er­al, par­tic­u­larly in the form of ini­tial mar­gins, vari­ation mar­gins and de­fault fund con­tri­bu­tions.

² This col­lat­er­al shall be cal­cu­lated at least in such a way that:

a.

a par­ti­cipant's vari­ation mar­gins cov­er the cur­rent cred­it ex­pos­ures based on real­ised mar­ket price move­ments;

b.

a par­ti­cipant's ini­tial mar­gins will, with a high de­gree of con­fid­ence, cov­er the po­ten­tial cred­it ex­pos­ures arising for a cent­ral coun­ter­party upon the par­ti­cipant's de­fault based on ex­pec­ted mar­ket price move­ments;

c.

the ini­tial mar­gins, vari­ation mar­gins and de­fault fund con­tri­bu­tions will be suf­fi­cient to cov­er the loss res­ult­ing un­der ex­treme but plaus­ible mar­ket con­di­tions from the de­fault of the par­ti­cipant to which the cent­ral coun­ter­party has its greatest ex­pos­ure.

³ The cent­ral coun­ter­party shall ac­cept only li­quid col­lat­er­al with low cred­it and mar­ket risks. It shall value the col­lat­er­al prudently.

¹ The cent­ral coun­ter­party and its par­ti­cipants shall ful­fil their mu­tu­al pay­ment ob­lig­a­tions by trans­fer­ring sight de­pos­its held with a cent­ral bank.

² If this is im­possible or im­prac­tic­al, they shall use a means of pay­ment which car­ries low cred­it and li­quid­ity risks. The cent­ral coun­ter­party shall min­im­ise these risks and mon­it­or them on an on­go­ing basis.

¹ In­di­vidu­ally and on a con­sol­id­ated basis, the cent­ral coun­ter­party must have ad­equate cap­it­al and di­ver­si­fy its risk ap­pro­pri­ately.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall set the amount of the cap­it­al based on the busi­ness activ­ity and the risks, and shall de­term­ine the risk di­ver­si­fic­a­tion re­quire­ments.

¹ The cent­ral coun­ter­party must have suf­fi­cient li­quid­ity:

a.

to ful­fil its pay­ment ob­lig­a­tions in all cur­ren­cies un­der ex­treme but plaus­ible mar­ket con­di­tions, even in the event of the de­fault of the par­ti­cipant to which it has its greatest ex­pos­ure; and

b.

to be able to duly ex­ecute its ser­vices and activ­it­ies.

² It shall in­vest its fin­an­cial re­sources solely in cash or in li­quid fin­an­cial in­stru­ments with a low mar­ket and cred­it risk.

¹ The cent­ral coun­ter­party shall take meas­ures to lim­it the cred­it and li­quid­ity risks in the event of a par­ti­cipant's de­fault.

² To cov­er any losses in the event of a par­ti­cipant's de­fault, it shall use col­lat­er­al and cap­it­al in the fol­low­ing or­der:

a.

mar­gins of the de­fault­ing par­ti­cipant;

b.

de­fault fund con­tri­bu­tions of the de­fault­ing par­ti­cipant;

c.

ded­ic­ated cap­it­al of the cent­ral coun­ter­party;

d.

de­fault fund con­tri­bu­tions of non-de­fault­ing par­ti­cipants.

³ It shall is­sue rules gov­ern­ing how more ex­tens­ive losses are to be covered. It may not:

a.

use the ini­tial mar­gins of non-de­fault­ing par­ti­cipants to cov­er losses caused by the de­fault of an­oth­er par­ti­cipant;

b.

use the col­lat­er­al of in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants to cov­er losses caused by the de­fault of a par­ti­cipant or oth­er in­dir­ect par­ti­cipant; or

c.

use an in­dir­ect par­ti­cipant's funds in ex­cess of the mar­gin re­quire­ment de­pos­ited with it in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 59 para­graph 3 to cov­er losses caused by the de­fault of a par­ti­cipant or oth­er in­dir­ect par­ti­cipant.

¹ The cent­ral coun­ter­party must:

a.

sep­ar­ate its own as­sets, re­ceiv­ables and li­ab­il­it­ies from the col­lat­er­al, re­ceiv­ables and li­ab­il­it­ies of its par­ti­cipants; and

b.

sep­ar­ate a par­ti­cipant's col­lat­er­al, re­ceiv­ables and li­ab­il­it­ies from those of oth­er par­ti­cipants.

² It shall of­fer its par­ti­cipants the pos­sib­il­ity of:

a.

sep­ar­at­ing their own col­lat­er­al, re­ceiv­ables and li­ab­il­it­ies from those of in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants;

b.

keep­ing and re­cord­ing the col­lat­er­al, re­ceiv­ables and li­ab­il­it­ies of in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants to­geth­er (om­ni­bus cus­tom­er ac­counts) or sep­ar­ately (in­di­vidu­al cus­tom­er ac­counts).

¹ The cent­ral coun­ter­party shall en­sure that, in the event of a par­ti­cipant's de­fault, the col­lat­er­al and po­s­i­tions held by the par­ti­cipant on be­half of an in­dir­ect par­ti­cipant can be trans­ferred to an­oth­er par­ti­cipant in­dic­ated by the in­dir­ect par­ti­cipant.

² A par­ti­cipant shall be con­sidered to be in de­fault if:

a.

it does not meet the ad­mis­sion re­quire­ments con­cern­ing the par­ti­cipant's fin­an­cial ca­pa­city by the dead­line set by the cent­ral coun­ter­party; or

b.

com­puls­ory wind­ing-up pro­ceed­ings were ini­ti­ated against it for the pur­poses of gen­er­al ex­e­cu­tion.

¹ Cent­ral coun­ter­parties may con­clude an agree­ment on the in­ter­op­er­able clear­ing of fin­an­cial trans­ac­tions (in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity agree­ment).

² A cent­ral coun­ter­party is ob­liged to ac­cept the re­quest of an­oth­er cent­ral coun­ter­party con­cern­ing the con­clu­sion of an in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity agree­ment, un­less the con­clu­sion of such an agree­ment would jeop­ard­ise the se­cur­ity and ef­fi­ciency of clear­ing.

¹ The con­clu­sion of an in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity agree­ment is sub­ject to ap­prov­al by FINMA.

² The in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity agree­ment shall be ap­proved if:

a.

the re­spect­ive rights and du­ties of the cent­ral coun­ter­parties are gov­erned;

b.

the cent­ral coun­ter­parties have ap­pro­pri­ate pro­ced­ures and in­stru­ments for man­aging the risks arising from the in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity agree­ment;

c.

the cent­ral coun­ter­party will cov­er the cred­it and li­quid­ity risks arising from the in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity agree­ment by im­me­di­ately de­mand­ing ap­pro­pri­ate col­lat­er­al from the oth­er cent­ral coun­ter­party;

d.

the cent­ral coun­ter­parties are au­thor­ised or re­cog­nised by FINMA;

e.

the au­thor­it­ies re­spons­ible for su­per­vising and over­see­ing the for­eign cent­ral coun­ter­party col­lab­or­ate with the com­pet­ent Swiss au­thor­it­ies.

³ If a cent­ral coun­ter­party in­volved in the in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity agree­ment is sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant, FINMA shall ob­tain the SNB's agree­ment be­fore grant­ing its ap­prov­al.

⁴ If a cent­ral coun­ter­party in­volved in an in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity agree­ment ex­tends its activ­ity to a new trad­ing ven­ue without this en­tail­ing new risks, the in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity agree­ment does not re­quire re-ap­prov­al.

A cent­ral coun­ter­party's par­ti­cipants which render a cent­ral coun­ter­party ac­cess­ible to in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants shall pub­lish the prices of the ser­vices they provide in con­nec­tion with clear­ing.

¹ A cent­ral coun­ter­party's par­ti­cipant shall sep­ar­ate the col­lat­er­al, re­ceiv­ables and li­ab­il­it­ies of in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants from its own as­sets and po­s­i­tions with the cent­ral coun­ter­party and in its own ac­counts.

² It shall of­fer in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants the pos­sib­il­ity of keep­ing and re­cord­ing the col­lat­er­al, re­ceiv­ables and li­ab­il­it­ies to­geth­er with those of oth­er in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants (om­ni­bus cus­tom­er ac­counts) or sep­ar­ately (in­di­vidu­al cus­tom­er ac­counts).

³ If an in­dir­ect par­ti­cipant opts for in­di­vidu­al cli­ent se­greg­a­tion, the par­ti­cipant must de­pos­it all funds in ex­cess of the in­dir­ect par­ti­cipant's mar­gin re­quire­ment with the cent­ral coun­ter­party and dis­tin­guish them from the mar­gin of oth­er in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants.

⁴ A cent­ral coun­ter­party's par­ti­cipant shall pub­lish the costs and spe­cif­ics con­cern­ing the level of pro­tec­tion gran­ted by the type of ac­count man­age­ment un­der para­graph 2.

¹ A cent­ral coun­ter­party re­gistered abroad must ob­tain FINMA re­cog­ni­tion be­fore it:

a.

grants su­per­vised Swiss par­ti­cipants dir­ect ac­cess to its fa­cil­it­ies;

b.

provides ser­vices for a Swiss fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture;

c.

enters in­to an in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity agree­ment with a Swiss cent­ral coun­ter­party.

² FINMA shall grant re­cog­ni­tion:

a.

if the for­eign cent­ral coun­ter­party is sub­ject to ap­pro­pri­ate reg­u­la­tion and su­per­vi­sion; and

b.

if the com­pet­ent for­eign su­per­vis­ory au­thor­it­ies:

1.

do not have any ob­jec­tions to the cross-bor­der activ­ity of the for­eign cent­ral coun­ter­party,

2.

guar­an­tee that they will in­form FINMA if they de­tect vi­ol­a­tions of the law or oth­er ir­reg­u­lar­it­ies on the part of Swiss par­ti­cipants, and

3.

provide FINMA with ad­min­is­trat­ive as­sist­ance.

³ FINMA may re­fuse re­cog­ni­tion if the state in which the for­eign cent­ral coun­ter­party has its re­gistered of­fice does not grant Swiss cent­ral coun­ter­parties ac­tu­al ac­cess to its mar­kets or does not of­fer them the same com­pet­it­ive op­por­tun­it­ies as those gran­ted to do­mest­ic cent­ral coun­ter­parties. Any de­vi­at­ing in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments are re­served.

⁴ It may ex­empt a for­eign cent­ral coun­ter­party from the ob­lig­a­tion to ob­tain re­cog­ni­tion provided this does not ad­versely af­fect the pro­tect­ive pur­pose of this Act.

¹ A cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory is the op­er­at­or of a cent­ral cus­todi­an or a se­cur­it­ies set­tle­ment sys­tem.

² A cent­ral cus­todi­an is an en­tity for the cent­ral cus­tody of se­cur­it­ies and oth­er fin­an­cial in­stru­ments based on uni­form rules and pro­ced­ures.

³ A se­cur­it­ies set­tle­ment sys­tem is an en­tity for the clear­ing and set­tle­ment of trans­ac­tions in se­cur­it­ies and oth­er fin­an­cial in­stru­ments based on uni­form rules and pro­ced­ures.

¹ The cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory shall en­sure the prop­er and law­ful cus­tody, re­cord­ing and trans­fer of se­cur­it­ies.

² It shall pro­hib­it its par­ti­cipants from over­draw­ing their se­cur­it­ies ac­counts for se­cur­it­ies held in cent­ral cus­tody with it.

³ It shall check on a daily basis wheth­er the num­ber of an is­suer's se­cur­it­ies is­sued with it is equal to the num­ber of se­cur­it­ies re­cor­ded in the par­ti­cipants' se­cur­it­ies ac­counts.

⁴ It shall spe­cify the time:

a.

after which a se­cur­it­ies trans­fer or­der is ir­re­voc­able and may no longer be changed;

b.

when a se­cur­it­ies trans­fer is settled.

⁵ It shall trans­fer se­cur­it­ies in real time if pos­sible, but at the latest at the end of the value day.

¹ The cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory shall set the dead­lines for par­ti­cipants to settle their se­cur­it­ies trans­ac­tions in its sys­tem. In do­ing so, it shall take ac­count in par­tic­u­lar of in­ter­na­tion­al prac­tices and its par­ti­cipants' needs.

² It shall en­able its par­ti­cipants to settle trans­ac­tions with­in the dead­lines it sets.

³ It shall mon­it­or wheth­er trans­ac­tions are settled with­in the al­loc­ated dead­lines. It shall im­pose the con­trac­tu­ally agreed sanc­tions in the event of late set­tle­ment.

¹ The cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory shall use ap­pro­pri­ate meas­ures to cov­er risks arising from the grant­ing of cred­it.

² It shall ac­cept only li­quid col­lat­er­al with low cred­it and mar­ket risks. It shall value the col­lat­er­al prudently.

¹ The cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory shall en­able the set­tle­ment of pay­ments in con­nec­tion with se­cur­it­ies held in cus­tody or re­cor­ded with it by trans­fer­ring sight de­pos­its held with a cent­ral bank.

² If this is im­possible or im­prac­tic­al, it shall use a means of pay­ment which car­ries no or only low cred­it and li­quid­ity risks. It shall min­im­ise these risks and mon­it­or them on an on­go­ing basis.

¹ In­di­vidu­ally and on a con­sol­id­ated basis, the cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory must have ad­equate cap­it­al and di­ver­si­fy its risk ap­pro­pri­ately.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall set the amount of the cap­it­al based on the busi­ness activ­ity and the risks, and shall de­term­ine the risk di­ver­si­fic­a­tion re­quire­ments.

¹ The cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory must have suf­fi­cient li­quid­ity:

a.

to ful­fil its pay­ment ob­lig­a­tions in all cur­ren­cies un­der ex­treme but plaus­ible mar­ket con­di­tions, even in the event of the de­fault of the par­ti­cipant to which it has its greatest ex­pos­ure; and

b.

to be able to duly ex­ecute its ser­vices and activ­it­ies.

² It shall in­vest its fin­an­cial re­sources solely in cash or in li­quid fin­an­cial in­stru­ments with a low mar­ket and cred­it risk.

The cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory shall provide for meas­ures to lim­it the cred­it and li­quid­ity risks that arise in the event of a par­ti­cipant's de­fault.

¹ The cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory must:

a.

sep­ar­ate its own as­sets from the se­cur­it­ies of its par­ti­cipants; and

b.

sep­ar­ate a giv­en par­ti­cipant's se­cur­it­ies from those of oth­er par­ti­cipants.

² It shall of­fer its par­ti­cipants the pos­sib­il­ity of:

a.

sep­ar­at­ing their own se­cur­it­ies from those of in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants;

b.

keep­ing and re­cord­ing the se­cur­it­ies of in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants to­geth­er (om­ni­bus cus­tom­er ac­counts) or sep­ar­ately (in­di­vidu­al cus­tom­er ac­counts).

Links between cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­or­ies are un­der­stood as mean­ing agree­ments:

a.

between cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­or­ies re­gard­ing the mu­tu­al ex­e­cu­tion of pay­ment and trans­fer or­ders (in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity links);

b.

re­gard­ing the dir­ect or in­dir­ect par­ti­cip­a­tion of a cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory in an­oth­er cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory (ac­cess links).

¹ The es­tab­lish­ment of the fol­low­ing links between cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­or­ies re­quires the ap­prov­al of FINMA:

a.

in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity agree­ments;

b.

ac­cess agree­ments in which a cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory provides ser­vices for the oth­er party that it does not provide for oth­er par­ti­cipants.

² Ap­prov­al is gran­ted if the cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­or­ies:

a.

ap­ply rules, pro­ced­ures and con­trols which al­low them to identi­fy, lim­it and mon­it­or the risks arising from their agree­ment for their own pro­tec­tion and that of their par­ti­cipants;

b.

check their re­cords are cor­rect by com­par­ing them; and

c.

set out in a writ­ten agree­ment their rights and du­ties, as well as the rights and du­ties of their par­ti­cipants if ap­pro­pri­ate.

³ If a cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory in­volved in a link between cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­or­ies is sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant, FINMA must ob­tain the SNB's agree­ment be­fore grant­ing ap­prov­al.

The es­tab­lish­ment of ac­cess links in which a cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory provides the same ser­vices for the oth­er party as it provides for oth­er par­ti­cipants must be re­por­ted to FINMA.

¹ A cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory's par­ti­cipant shall sep­ar­ate the se­cur­it­ies, re­ceiv­ables and li­ab­il­it­ies of in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants from its own as­sets, re­ceiv­ables and li­ab­il­it­ies with the cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory and in its own ac­counts.

² It shall of­fer in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants the pos­sib­il­ity of keep­ing and re­cord­ing se­cur­it­ies, re­ceiv­ables and li­ab­il­it­ies to­geth­er with those of oth­er in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants (om­ni­bus cus­tom­er ac­counts) or sep­ar­ately (in­di­vidu­al cus­tom­er ac­counts).

³ If an in­dir­ect par­ti­cipant opts for in­di­vidu­al cli­ent se­greg­a­tion, the par­ti­cipant must de­pos­it all funds in ex­cess of the in­di­vidu­al par­ti­cipant's mar­gin re­quire­ment with the cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory and dis­tin­guish them from the mar­gin pay­ments of oth­er in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants.

⁴ A cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory's par­ti­cipant shall pub­lish the costs and spe­cif­ics con­cern­ing the level of pro­tec­tion gran­ted by the type of ac­count man­age­ment un­der para­graph 2.

¹ A DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity is a com­mer­cially op­er­ated in­sti­tu­tion for mul­ti­lat­er­al trad­ing of DLT se­cur­it­ies whose pur­pose is the sim­ul­tan­eous ex­change of bids between sev­er­al par­ti­cipants and the con­clu­sion of con­tracts based on non-dis­cre­tion­ary rules and which meets at least one of the fol­low­ing cri­ter­ia:

a.

It ad­mits par­ti­cipants in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 73c para­graph 2 let­ter e.

b.

It holds DLT se­cur­it­ies in cent­ral cus­tody based on uni­form rules and pro­ced­ures.

c.

It clears and settles trans­ac­tions in DLT se­cur­it­ies based on uni­form rules and pro­ced­ures.

² The cri­terion of a com­mer­cial basis is deemed sat­is­fied by an in­de­pend­ent eco­nom­ic activ­ity pur­sued on a per­man­ent, for-profit basis.

DLT trad­ing fa­cil­it­ies are sub­ject to the fol­low­ing re­quire­ments for trad­ing ven­ues:

a.

self-reg­u­la­tion (Art. 27);

b.

or­gan­isa­tion of trad­ing (Art. 28);

c.

pre- and post-trade trans­par­ency (Art. 29);

d.

guar­an­tee of or­derly trad­ing (Art. 30);

e.

su­per­vi­sion of trad­ing (Art. 31);

f.

col­lab­or­a­tion between trad­ing su­per­vis­ory bod­ies (Art. 32);

g.

sus­pen­sion of trad­ing (Art. 33 para. 2);

h.

ap­peal body (Art. 37).

¹ The fol­low­ing may be ad­mit­ted as par­ti­cipants in a DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity:

a.

se­cur­it­ies firms as defined in Art­icle 41 of the Fin­IA³⁰;

b.

oth­er parties su­per­vised by FINMA in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 3 of the FIN­MASA³¹ as well as parties su­per­vised by a for­eign au­thor­ity, provided that the DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity en­sures that they ful­fil equi­val­ent tech­nic­al and op­er­a­tion­al con­di­tions to se­cur­it­ies firms;

c.

the SNB;

d.

the Bank for In­ter­na­tion­al Set­tle­ments;

e.

oth­er nat­ur­al per­sons and leg­al en­tit­ies, provided that they de­clare that they are par­ti­cip­at­ing in their own name and for their own ac­count.

² Par­ti­cipants dom­i­ciled in Switzer­land must provide FINMA with all in­form­a­tion and doc­u­ments that it re­quires to carry out its tasks. The DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity must en­sure that for­eign-dom­i­ciled par­ti­cipants provide the rel­ev­ant in­form­a­tion and doc­u­ments if FINMA so re­quires.

³ The pro­vi­sions on the re­cord-keep­ing duty (Art. 38) and the re­port­ing duty (Art. 39) of par­ti­cipants also ap­ply to par­ti­cipants in a DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may make ex­cep­tions for par­ti­cipants un­der para­graph 1 let­ter e.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the de­tails re­gard­ing the ad­mis­sion, du­ties and ex­clu­sion of par­ti­cipants.

⁵ The DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity shall is­sue reg­u­la­tions on the ad­mis­sion, du­ties and ex­clu­sion of par­ti­cipants, thereby ob­serving in par­tic­u­lar the prin­ciple of equal treat­ment.

⁶ It shall mon­it­or com­pli­ance with the reg­u­la­tions and im­pose the sanc­tions provided for con­trac­tu­ally in the event of vi­ol­a­tions.

¹ The DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity shall is­sue reg­u­la­tions on the ad­mis­sion of DLT se­cur­it­ies to trad­ing and to the oth­er ser­vices it provides. In par­tic­u­lar, it shall set out therein the re­quire­ments to be met by the DLT se­cur­it­ies and the is­suers or third parties in con­nec­tion with the ad­mis­sion. The duty to pub­lish a pro­spect­us is gov­erned ex­clus­ively by Art­icles 35–57 of the Fin­an­cial Ser­vices Act of 15 June 2018³².

² A DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity that, in ad­di­tion to DLT se­cur­it­ies, ad­mits oth­er as­sets to trad­ing or to its oth­er ser­vices shall is­sue reg­u­la­tions on the ad­mis­sion of such as­sets.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may:

a.

re­quire that DLT se­cur­it­ies be ad­mit­ted to DLT trad­ing fa­cil­it­ies only if they meet cer­tain min­im­um re­quire­ments, in par­tic­u­lar as re­gards their in­teg­rity and the avail­ab­il­ity of pub­lic in­form­a­tion;

b.

spe­cify which DLT se­cur­it­ies and oth­er as­sets must not be ad­mit­ted to DLT trad­ing fa­cil­it­ies in or­der to pro­tect fin­an­cial mar­ket par­ti­cipants or the sta­bil­ity or in­teg­rity of the fin­an­cial sys­tem.

⁴ The DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity shall mon­it­or com­pli­ance with the reg­u­la­tions and im­pose the sanc­tions provided for con­trac­tu­ally in the event of vi­ol­a­tions.

¹ For DLT trad­ing fa­cil­it­ies that are open to par­ti­cipants un­der Art­icle 73c para­graph 1 let­ter e, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may set re­quire­ments for the pro­tec­tion of these par­ti­cipants in ad­di­tion to the re­quire­ments un­der Art­icles 73b–73d.

² For DLT trad­ing fa­cil­it­ies that provide cent­ral cus­tody, clear­ing and set­tle­ment ser­vices, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall set re­quire­ments in ad­di­tion to those un­der Art­icles 73a–73d, in par­tic­u­lar with re­gard to:

a.

the cent­ral cus­tody, clear­ing and set­tle­ment of DLT se­cur­it­ies;

b.

col­lat­er­al;

c.

cap­it­al ad­equacy;

d.

risk di­ver­si­fic­a­tion;

e.

an­cil­lary ser­vices;

f.

li­quid­ity;

g.

pro­ced­ure in the event of a par­ti­cipant's de­fault;

h.

se­greg­a­tion.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall base the re­quire­ments un­der para­graph 2 on the re­quire­ments for cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­or­ies (Arts. 61–73).

⁴ Where ne­ces­sary in or­der to take ac­count of tech­no­logy-spe­cif­ic risks, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may au­thor­ise FINMA to draw up the re­quire­ments un­der para­graph 2.

⁵ The com­pet­ence of the SNB to spe­cify spe­cial re­quire­ments for sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant DLT trad­ing fa­cil­it­ies by vir­tue of Art­icle 23 is re­served.

¹ For reas­ons of pro­por­tion­al­ity and while tak­ing in­to ac­count the pro­tect­ive pur­pose of this Act, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ease the re­quire­ments for small DLT trad­ing fa­cil­it­ies un­der Art­icles 6–21, 27–33 and 37, in par­tic­u­lar the re­quire­ments on:

a.

sep­ar­a­tion of the bod­ies re­spons­ible for busi­ness man­age­ment from those re­spons­ible for over­all man­age­ment, su­per­vi­sion and con­trol (Art. 8);

b.

the pro­vi­sion of an­cil­lary ser­vices not sub­ject to au­thor­isa­tion or ap­prov­al by vir­tue of the fin­an­cial mar­ket le­gis­la­tion (Art. 10);

c.

the in­de­pend­ence of the self-reg­u­lat­ory or­gan­isa­tion (Art. 27 para. 2) and of the ap­peal body (Art. 37 para. 1).

² DLT trad­ing fa­cil­it­ies are deemed to be small if they pose a low risk in terms of the pro­tec­tion of fin­an­cial mar­ket par­ti­cipants and the prop­er func­tion­ing and sta­bil­ity of the fin­an­cial sys­tem, in par­tic­u­lar be­cause the num­ber of par­ti­cipants, the trad­ing volume, the volume of cus­tody as­sets or the clear­ing and set­tle­ment volume is lim­ited. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall set thresholds.

³ DLT-Han­delssysteme, die Er­leichter­ungen nach diesem Artikel er­hal­ten, sind ver­p­f­lichtet, dies ge­genüber ihren Kundinnen und Kun­den of­fen­zule­gen. Der Bundes­rat re­gelt die De­tails.

A trade re­pos­it­ory is an en­tity which col­lects, man­ages and re­tains in a cent­ral­ised man­ner the data on de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions re­por­ted to it in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 104.

The trade re­pos­it­ory shall re­cord the re­por­ted data and re­tain it for at least ten years after the con­tract was due.

¹ The trade re­pos­it­ory shall reg­u­larly pub­lish the open po­s­i­tions, trans­ac­tion volumes and val­ues by de­riv­at­ives cat­egory in ag­greg­ated and an­onymised form on the basis of the re­por­ted data.

² It may pub­lish fur­ther data provided it is ag­greg­ated and an­onymised.

¹ The trade re­pos­it­ory shall grant the fol­low­ing au­thor­it­ies free ac­cess to the data they re­quire to per­form their tasks:

a.

FINMA;

b.

the SNB;

c.

oth­er Swiss fin­an­cial mar­ket su­per­vis­ory au­thor­it­ies;

d.

the Fed­er­al Elec­tri­city Com­mis­sion.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late ac­cess to data con­cern­ing cent­ral bank trans­ac­tions, tak­ing ac­count of re­cog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards.

¹ The trade re­pos­it­ory shall grant a for­eign fin­an­cial mar­ket su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity free ac­cess to the data it re­quires to per­form its tasks if an agree­ment re­gard­ing co­oper­a­tion between the com­pet­ent Swiss and for­eign su­per­vis­ory au­thor­it­ies con­firms ful­fil­ment of the fol­low­ing con­di­tions:

a.

The for­eign fin­an­cial mar­ket su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity is sub­ject to a stat­utory con­fid­en­ti­al­ity duty.

b.

For­ward­ing of the data by the for­eign fin­an­cial mar­ket su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity to oth­er for­eign au­thor­it­ies is per­mit­ted only if, on trans­fer to a crim­in­al au­thor­ity, mu­tu­al as­sist­ance in ac­cord­ance with the Mu­tu­al As­sist­ance Act of 20 March 1981³³ is pos­sible.

c.

The Swiss au­thor­it­ies men­tioned in Art­icle 77 para­graph 1 have im­me­di­ate ac­cess to trade re­pos­it­or­ies in the state of the for­eign fin­an­cial mar­ket su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late ac­cess to data con­cern­ing cent­ral bank trans­ac­tions, tak­ing ac­count of re­cog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards.

¹ The trade re­pos­it­ory may trans­mit data to private in­di­vidu­als in ag­greg­ated and an­onymised form.

² The trans­mis­sion of data to private in­di­vidu­als re­gard­ing their own trans­ac­tions is per­mit­ted without re­stric­tion.

¹ A trade re­pos­it­ory re­gistered abroad must ob­tain re­cog­ni­tion from FINMA be­fore ac­cept­ing re­ports in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 104.

² FINMA shall grant re­cog­ni­tion:

a.

if the for­eign trade re­pos­it­ory is sub­ject to ap­pro­pri­ate reg­u­la­tion and su­per­vi­sion; and

b.

if the com­pet­ent for­eign su­per­vis­ory au­thor­it­ies:

1.

do not have any ob­jec­tions to the cross-bor­der activ­ity of the for­eign trade re­pos­it­ory,

2.

guar­an­tee that they will in­form FINMA if they de­tect vi­ol­a­tions of the law or oth­er ir­reg­u­lar­it­ies on the part of Swiss par­ti­cipants,

3.

con­firm to the com­pet­ent Swiss fin­an­cial mar­ket su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity that the con­di­tions set out in Art­icle 78 para­graph 1 let­ters b and c are ful­filled.

³ A trade re­pos­it­ory is deemed re­cog­nised if FINMA finds that:

a.

the state in which the for­eign trade re­pos­it­ory has its re­gistered of­fice reg­u­lates and su­per­vises its trade re­pos­it­or­ies ad­equately; and

b.

the con­di­tions in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 2 let­ter b are met.

⁴ FINMA may re­fuse re­cog­ni­tion if the state in which the for­eign trade re­pos­it­ory has its re­gistered of­fice does not grant Swiss trade re­pos­it­or­ies ac­tu­al ac­cess to its mar­kets or does not of­fer them the same com­pet­it­ive op­por­tun­it­ies as those gran­ted to the trade re­pos­it­or­ies of the state in ques­tion. Any de­vi­at­ing in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments are re­served.

A pay­ment sys­tem is an en­tity that clears and settles pay­ment ob­lig­a­tions based on uni­form rules and pro­ced­ures.

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may define spe­cif­ic du­ties for pay­ment sys­tems, namely in terms of cap­it­al ad­equacy, risk di­ver­si­fic­a­tion and li­quid­ity, if this is ne­ces­sary for im­ple­ment­ing re­cog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards. The com­pet­ence of the SNB to spe­cify spe­cial re­quire­ments for sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant pay­ment sys­tems by vir­tue of Art­icle 23 is re­served.

¹ FINMA is the su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity. Sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures are also sub­ject to over­sight by the SNB.

² FINMA shall su­per­vise com­pli­ance with the au­thor­isa­tion con­di­tions and du­ties in­so­far as this task is not covered by the SNB by vir­tue of the over­sight of the spe­cial re­quire­ments in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 23.

³ FINMA and the SNB shall jointly carry out their su­per­vis­ory and over­sight activ­it­ies re­gard­ing sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures, reg­u­larly ex­change in­form­a­tion and avoid over­laps in the ex­e­cu­tion of their tasks. When co­oper­at­ing with for­eign su­per­vis­ory and over­sight au­thor­it­ies, they shall co­ordin­ate the dis­charge of their du­ties and their com­mu­nic­a­tion.

¹ Fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures and fin­an­cial groups must in­struct an audit firm li­censed by the Fed­er­al Audit Over­sight Au­thor­ity in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 9a para­graph 1 AOA³⁴ to con­duct an audit in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 24 of the FIN­MASA³⁵.

² They must have their an­nu­al ac­counts, and if ap­plic­able their con­sol­id­ated ac­counts, audited by an audit firm sub­ject to state over­sight in ac­cord­ance with the or­din­ary audit­ing prin­ciples set out in the Code of Ob­lig­a­tions (CO)³⁶.

³ FINMA may audit fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures dir­ectly.

FINMA may sus­pend the vot­ing rights at­tached to shares or units held by qual­i­fied par­ti­cipants in or­der to en­force Art­icle 9 para­graphs 3 and 5.

¹ A fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture which wishes to re­turn its au­thor­isa­tion must present a li­quid­a­tion plan to FINMA for ap­prov­al.

² The li­quid­a­tion plan must con­tain de­tails on:

a.

the set­tle­ment of fin­an­cial ob­lig­a­tions;

b.

the funds made avail­able for this pur­pose;

c.

the per­son re­spons­ible.

³ A fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture is re­leased from su­per­vi­sion by FINMA when it has ful­filled the du­ties set out in the li­quid­a­tion plan.

1 As a com­ple­ment to Art­icle 37 FIN­MASA³⁷, FINMA may with­draw au­thor­isa­tion or re­cog­ni­tion from a fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture if it:

a.

does not use the au­thor­isa­tion with­in twelve months;

b.

has not provided ser­vices per­mit­ted solely with the au­thor­isa­tion dur­ing the pre­ced­ing six months;

c.

does not com­ply with the li­quid­a­tion plan.

² The with­draw­al of au­thor­isa­tion shall cause the dis­sol­u­tion of the leg­al en­tity. FINMA shall des­ig­nate the li­quid­at­or and over­see its activ­ity. The in­solv­ency law pro­vi­sions in ac­cord­ance with Chapter 8 re­main re­served.

¹ Art­icles 24 to 37 and 37d to 37g, with the ex­cep­tion of Art­icle 37g para­graph 4^bis of the Bank­ing Act of 8 Novem­ber 1934³⁸ ap­ply by ana­logy for fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures un­less this Act con­tains pro­vi­sions to the con­trary.³⁹

² In the case of sys­tem­ic­ally im­port­ant fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures, FINMA shall con­sult the SNB be­fore tak­ing in­solv­ency meas­ures.

¹ In­so­far as this is pos­sible and to the ex­tent that they are con­cerned, FINMA shall in­form cent­ral coun­ter­parties, cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­or­ies, pay­ment sys­tems and those DLT trad­ing fa­cil­it­ies that provide com­par­able cent­ral cus­tody, clear­ing or set­tle­ment ser­vices, in Switzer­land and abroad, of the in­solv­ency meas­ures it in­tends to take against a par­ti­cipant and which lim­it the par­ti­cipant's power of dis­pos­al. It shall also in­form them of the pre­cise time of entry in­to ef­fect of the meas­ures.⁴⁰

² The or­ders giv­en to a cent­ral coun­ter­party, cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory, pay­ment sys­tem or a DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity that provides com­par­able cent­ral cus­tody, clear­ing or set­tle­ment ser­vices by a par­ti­cipant against which such an in­solv­ency meas­ure has been taken shall be leg­ally en­force­able and bind­ing on third parties if:⁴¹

a. they were in­tro­duced be­fore the meas­ure was ordered and were un­al­ter­able in ac­cord­ance with the rules of the fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture; or

b. they were ex­ecuted on the busi­ness day defined by the rules of the fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture dur­ing which the meas­ure was ordered and the fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture proves that it was not and should not have been aware of the meas­ure be­ing ordered.

³ Para­graph 2 ap­plies if:

a. the fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture is au­thor­ised in Switzer­land;

b. the for­eign fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture is re­cog­nised or su­per­vised in Switzer­land and grants Swiss par­ti­cipants dir­ect ac­cess to its fa­cil­it­ies; or

c. the par­ti­cip­a­tion agree­ment is sub­ject to Swiss law.

⁴ Para­graph 2 ap­plies by ana­logy to:

a.

fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 4 para­graph 3;

b.

pay­ment sys­tems that are op­er­ated by banks.

¹ In­solv­ency meas­ures that are ordered against a cent­ral coun­ter­party's par­ti­cipant have no ef­fect on pre­vi­ously con­cluded agree­ments between the cent­ral coun­ter­party and the par­ti­cipant re­gard­ing:

a. the off­set­ting of re­ceiv­ables, in­clud­ing the agreed meth­od and valu­ation;

b. the dir­ect real­isa­tion of col­lat­er­al in the form of se­cur­it­ies or oth­er fin­an­cial in­stru­ments whose value can be de­term­ined ob­ject­ively;

c. the trans­fer of re­ceiv­ables and li­ab­il­it­ies, and col­lat­er­al in the form of se­cur­it­ies, or oth­er fin­an­cial in­stru­ments whose value can be de­term­ined ob­ject­ively.

² Fol­low­ing the net­ting or real­isa­tion car­ried out by the cent­ral coun­ter­party in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 let­ters a and b, the par­ti­cipant's re­main­ing en­ti­tle­ments shall be se­greg­ated in fa­vour of its cli­ents and in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants.

³ Meas­ures to the con­trary ordered with­in the scope of the post­pone­ment of the ter­min­a­tion of con­tracts by FINMA are re­served.

¹ In­solv­ency meas­ures that are ordered against a cent­ral coun­ter­party's in­dir­ect par­ti­cipant have no ef­fect on pre­vi­ously con­cluded agree­ments pur­su­ant to Art­icle 90 para­graph 1 let­ters a to c between the par­ti­cipant and the in­dir­ect par­ti­cipant.

² Fol­low­ing the net­ting or real­isa­tion car­ried out by the par­ti­cipant with­in the mean­ing of Art­icle 90 para­graph 1 let­ters a and b, the in­dir­ect par­ti­cipant's re­main­ing en­ti­tle­ments shall be se­greg­ated in fa­vour of its cli­ents and in­dir­ect par­ti­cipants.

³ Para­graphs 1 and 2 shall also ap­ply to in­solv­ency meas­ures against the in­dir­ect par­ti­cipant of an­oth­er in­dir­ect par­ti­cipant.

⁴ Meas­ures to the con­trary ordered with­in the scope of the post­pone­ment of the ter­min­a­tion of con­tracts by FINMA are re­served.

If FINMA post­pones the ter­min­a­tion of con­tracts and the ex­er­cise of rights to ter­min­ate them, it shall take ac­count of the im­plic­a­tions for the fin­an­cial mar­kets and the se­cure and or­derly op­er­a­tion of the af­fected fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture, its par­ti­cipants and oth­er fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­tures as­so­ci­ated with it.

¹ Sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions set out be­low, this chapter ap­plies to fin­an­cial and non-fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties which have their re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land.

² The term fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties means:

a.

banks in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 1 para­graph 1 of the Bank­ing Act of 8 Novem­ber 1934⁴²;

b.⁴³

se­cur­it­ies firms in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 41 Fin­IA⁴⁴;

c.

in­sur­ance and re­in­sur­ance com­pan­ies in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 2 para­graph 1 let­ter a of the Fed­er­al Act of 17 Decem­ber 2004⁴⁵ on the Su­per­vi­sion of In­sur­ance Com­pan­ies;

d.

par­ent com­pan­ies of a fin­an­cial or in­sur­ance group or fin­an­cial or in­sur­ance con­glom­er­ate;

e.⁴⁶

man­agers of col­lect­ive as­sets and fund man­age­ment com­pan­ies in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 2 para­graph 1 let­ters c and d Fin­IA;

f.

col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes in ac­cord­ance with the Col­lect­ive In­vest­ment Schemes Act;

g.

oc­cu­pa­tion­al pen­sion schemes and in­vest­ment found­a­tions in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 48 to 53k of the Fed­er­al Act of 25 June 1982⁴⁷ on Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Old Age, Sur­viv­ors' and In­valid­ity Pen­sion Pro­vi­sion.

³ Non-fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties are com­pan­ies that are not fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties.

⁴ The fol­low­ing es­tab­lish­ments shall be sub­ject only to the re­port­ing duty in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 104:

a.

mul­ti­lat­er­al de­vel­op­ment banks;

b.

or­gan­isa­tions, in­clud­ing so­cial se­cur­ity in­sti­tu­tions, be­long­ing to the Con­fed­er­a­tion, can­tons or com­munes or for which the Con­fed­er­a­tion, can­ton or com­mune in ques­tion is li­able and provided that they are not fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties.

⁵ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may sub­ject Swiss branches of for­eign fin­an­cial mar­ket par­ti­cipants to the pro­vi­sions of this chapter if they are not sub­ject to any equi­val­ent reg­u­la­tions.

¹ This chapter does not ap­ply to:

a.

the Con­fed­er­a­tion, can­tons and com­munes;

b.

the SNB;

c.

the Bank for In­ter­na­tion­al Set­tle­ments.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may, for reas­ons of pro­por­tion­al­ity and tak­ing ac­count of re­cog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards, ex­clude oth­er pub­lic sec­tor bod­ies or fin­an­cial mar­ket par­ti­cipants from the scope of this chapter in whole or in part.

³ The fol­low­ing are not con­sidered to be de­riv­at­ives in ac­cord­ance with this chapter:

a.

struc­tured products such as cap­it­al-pro­tec­ted products, capped re­turn products and cer­ti­fic­ates;

b.

se­cur­it­ies lend­ing and bor­row­ing;

c.

de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions re­lat­ing to goods that:

1.

must be phys­ic­ally de­livered,

2.

can­not be settled in cash at a party's dis­cre­tion, and

3.

are not traded on a trad­ing ven­ue or an or­gan­ised trad­ing fa­cil­ity.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ex­clude de­riv­at­ives from the pro­vi­sions of this chapter if this is in keep­ing with in­ter­na­tion­ally re­cog­nised stand­ards.

The du­ties set out in this chapter shall be deemed ful­filled if:

a.

they are ful­filled un­der for­eign law re­cog­nised as be­ing equi­val­ent by FINMA;

b.

a for­eign fin­an­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture re­cog­nised by FINMA was used to ex­ecute the trans­ac­tion.

Coun­ter­parties may ex­change with their group com­pan­ies and branches abroad all data ne­ces­sary for im­me­di­ate ful­fil­ment of the du­ties arising from this chapter.

¹ Coun­ter­parties must clear trans­ac­tions in de­riv­at­ives in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 101 that were not con­duc­ted via a trad­ing ven­ue (OTC de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions) through a cent­ral coun­ter­party au­thor­ised or re­cog­nised by FINMA.

² This duty does not ap­ply to trans­ac­tions with small coun­ter­parties or for trans­ac­tions between such coun­ter­parties.

³ A coun­ter­party may as­sume that its coun­ter­party's de­clar­a­tion con­cern­ing its char­ac­ter­ist­ics is cor­rect in­so­far as there are no in­dic­a­tions to the con­trary.

⁴ In or­der to com­ple­ment the duty de­tailed in Art­icle 112, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may or­der that all de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions con­duc­ted via a trad­ing ven­ue or or­gan­ised trad­ing fa­cil­ity must be cleared by a cent­ral coun­ter­party au­thor­ised or re­cog­nised by FINMA.

⁵ FINMA may al­low clear­ing by an un­re­cog­nised cent­ral coun­ter­party in in­di­vidu­al cases, provided this does not ad­versely af­fect the pro­tect­ive pur­pose of this Act.

¹ A non-fin­an­cial coun­ter­party is deemed to be small if all of the rolling av­er­ages for its gross po­s­i­tions in rel­ev­ant out­stand­ing OTC de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions cal­cu­lated over 30 work­ing days are be­low the thresholds.

² If one of the av­er­age gross po­s­i­tions of an ex­ist­ing small non-fin­an­cial coun­ter­party cal­cu­lated in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 ex­ceeds the rel­ev­ant threshold, said coun­ter­party will no longer be deemed small four months after the threshold is ex­ceeded.

³ De­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions in­ten­ded to re­duce risks are not factored in­to the cal­cu­la­tion of the av­er­age gross po­s­i­tion if they are dir­ectly as­so­ci­ated with the busi­ness activ­ity, li­quid­ity man­age­ment or as­set man­age­ment of the coun­ter­party or group.

¹ A fin­an­cial coun­ter­party is deemed to be small if the rolling av­er­age for its gross po­s­i­tion in all out­stand­ing OTC de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions cal­cu­lated over 30 work­ing days is be­low the threshold.

² If an ex­ist­ing small fin­an­cial coun­ter­party's av­er­age gross po­s­i­tion in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 ex­ceeds the threshold, said coun­ter­party will no longer be deemed small four months after the threshold is ex­ceeded.

¹ Thresholds ap­ply by de­riv­at­ives cat­egory to non-fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties' av­er­age gross po­s­i­tions in out­stand­ing OTC de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions.

² A single threshold shall ap­ply to the av­er­age gross po­s­i­tions in all out­stand­ing OTC de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions of fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties.

³ If the coun­ter­party is part of a fully con­sol­id­ated group, all of the in­tra-group OTC de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions con­cluded by the coun­ter­party or by oth­er coun­ter­parties shall also be factored in­to the cal­cu­la­tion of the av­er­age gross po­s­i­tions.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine:

a.

for non-fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties, the level of the thresholds for each de­riv­at­ives cat­egory and how they are cal­cu­lated;

b.

which de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions of non-fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties are not to be taken in­to ac­count when cal­cu­lat­ing the thresholds;

c.

the threshold for fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties.

¹ FINMA de­term­ines the de­riv­at­ives which must be cleared via a cent­ral coun­ter­party. In so do­ing, it con­siders:

a.

their de­gree of leg­al and op­er­a­tion­al stand­ard­isa­tion;

b.

their li­quid­ity;

c.

their trad­ing volumes;

d.

the avail­ab­il­ity of pri­cing in­form­a­tion in the giv­en cat­egory;

e.

the coun­ter­party risks as­so­ci­ated with them.

² It shall take ac­count of re­cog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards and for­eign leg­al de­vel­op­ments. It may phase in the in­tro­duc­tion of the clear­ing duty by de­riv­at­ives cat­egory.

³ No clear­ing duty may be im­posed for:

a.

de­riv­at­ives that are not cleared by any au­thor­ised or re­cog­nised cent­ral coun­ter­party;

b.

cur­rency swaps and for­ward trans­ac­tions, provided they are settled on a pay­ment versus pay­ment basis.

The duty to clear through a cent­ral coun­ter­party also ap­plies if the for­eign coun­ter­party of the Swiss coun­ter­party sub­ject to this duty would be sub­ject to the clear­ing duty if it had its re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land.

De­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions do not have to be cleared via a cent­ral coun­ter­party:

a.

if the two coun­ter­parties are in­cluded in the same full con­sol­id­a­tion basis;

b.

if the two coun­ter­parties are sub­ject to ap­pro­pri­ate cent­ral­ised risk eval­u­ation, meas­ure­ment and con­trol pro­ced­ures; and

c.

if the trans­ac­tions do not aim to cir­cum­vent the clear­ing duty.

¹ De­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions must be re­por­ted to a trade re­pos­it­ory au­thor­ised or re­cog­nised by FINMA.

² The fol­low­ing shall be ob­liged to re­port:

a.

in the case of trans­ac­tions between a fin­an­cial and a non-fin­an­cial coun­ter­party: the fin­an­cial coun­ter­party;

b.

in the case of trans­ac­tions between two fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties:

1.

the fin­an­cial coun­ter­party which is not small in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 99,

2.

the selling coun­ter­party in the case of a trans­ac­tion between two fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties or between two small fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties;

c.

the coun­ter­party which has its re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land if the for­eign coun­ter­party does not re­port.

³ In the event of a trans­ac­tion between non-fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties, para­graph2 let­ters b and c ap­plies by ana­logy. A trans­ac­tion between small non-fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties does not have to be re­por­ted.

⁴ If the trans­ac­tion is cleared cent­rally, the re­port is sub­mit­ted by the cent­ral coun­ter­party. If a re­cog­nised for­eign cent­ral coun­ter­party does not sub­mit re­ports, the re­port­ing duty shall re­main with the coun­ter­parties.

⁵ Third parties may be in­volved in re­port­ing.

⁶ If there is no trade re­pos­it­ory, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall in­dic­ate the body to which the re­port is to be sub­mit­ted.

¹ The re­port is to be sub­mit­ted at the latest on the work­ing day fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion, amend­ment or ter­min­a­tion of the de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tion.

² For each trans­ac­tion, the fol­low­ing must be re­por­ted as a min­im­um:

a.

the iden­tity of the coun­ter­parties, par­tic­u­larly their busi­ness name and seat;

b.

the type of trans­ac­tion;

c.

the ma­tur­ity date;

d.

the nom­in­al value;

e.

the price;

f.

the set­tle­ment date;

g.

the cur­rency.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may make pro­vi­sion for the re­port­ing of oth­er de­tails and gov­erns the re­port­ing format.

⁴ Re­ports to a re­cog­nised for­eign trade re­pos­it­ory may in­clude fur­ther de­tails. If these con­sist of per­son­al data, the ap­prov­al of the per­son in ques­tion is to be ob­tained.

Coun­ter­parties must re­tain the sup­port­ing doc­u­ments for their de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions of Art­icle 958f CO⁴⁸.

¹ OTC de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions which do not have to be cleared by a cent­ral coun­ter­party au­thor­ised or re­cog­nised by FINMA are sub­ject to the du­ties set out in this sec­tion.

² These du­ties do not ap­ply to:

a.

de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions with coun­ter­parties in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 93 para­graph 4 and Art­icle 94 para­graph 1;

b.⁴⁹

cur­rency swaps and cur­rency for­ward trans­ac­tions, provided they are settled on a pay­ment versus pay­ment basis;

c.

de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions vol­un­tar­ily cleared by a cent­ral coun­ter­party au­thor­ised or re­cog­nised by FINMA.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may make pro­vi­sion for fur­ther com­plete or par­tial ex­emp­tions for reas­ons of pro­por­tion­al­ity and tak­ing ac­count of re­cog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards.

Coun­ter­parties shall re­cord, ob­serve and mit­ig­ate op­er­at­ing risks and coun­ter­party risks as­so­ci­ated with de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 107 para­graph 1. In par­tic­u­lar, they must:

a.

con­firm the con­trac­tu­al terms of de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions in a timely man­ner;

b.

have pro­ced­ures for re­con­cil­ing port­fo­li­os and man­aging the as­so­ci­ated risks, ex­cept for when the coun­ter­party is a small non-fin­an­cial coun­ter­party;

c.

have pro­ced­ures for identi­fy­ing and resolv­ing dis­putes between parties at an early stage;

d.

reg­u­larly, but at least twice per year, per­form port­fo­lio com­pres­sion where this is ap­pro­pri­ate to mit­ig­ate their coun­ter­party risk and provided they have 500 or more non-cent­rally cleared OTC de­riv­at­ives trans­ac­tions out­stand­ing.

¹ Coun­ter­parties must value de­riv­at­ives at cur­rent prices (mark to mar­ket) on a daily basis.

² This duty does not ap­ply to trans­ac­tions with small coun­ter­parties.

³ Where mar­ket con­di­tions pre­vent mark­ing to mar­ket, mark­ing to mod­el shall be used. The valu­ation mod­els must be ap­pro­pri­ate and re­cog­nised in prac­tice.

⁴ Non-fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties may in­volve third parties for the valu­ation.

¹ Coun­ter­parties, with the ex­cep­tion of small non-fin­an­cial coun­ter­parties, shall ex­change ap­pro­pri­ate col­lat­er­al.

² They must be cap­able of se­greg­at­ing the col­lat­er­al from their own as­sets in an ap­pro­pri­ate man­ner.

³ Agree­ments re­gard­ing the dir­ect real­isa­tion of col­lat­er­al ex­changed in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 whose value can be de­term­ined ob­ject­ively shall re­main in force even in fore­clos­ure pro­ceed­ings and in the case of in­solv­ency meas­ures against the pro­tec­tion seller.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the re­quire­ments for the ex­change of col­lat­er­al.

No col­lat­er­al has to be ex­changed:

a.

if the two coun­ter­parties are in­cluded in the same full con­sol­id­a­tion basis;

b.

if the two coun­ter­parties are sub­ject to ap­pro­pri­ate cent­ral­ised risk eval­u­ation, meas­ure­ment and con­trol pro­ced­ures;

c.

if there are no leg­al or fac­tu­al im­ped­i­ments to the prompt trans­fer of own funds or the re­pay­ment of li­ab­il­it­ies; and

d.

if the trans­ac­tions do not aim to cir­cum­vent the duty to ex­change col­lat­er­al.

¹ Coun­ter­parties must trade all de­riv­at­ives in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 113 via:

a.

a trad­ing ven­ue that is au­thor­ised or re­cog­nised by FINMA; or

b.

the op­er­at­or of an or­gan­ised trad­ing fa­cil­ity that is au­thor­ised or re­cog­nised by FINMA.

² This duty does not ap­ply to trans­ac­tions with small coun­ter­parties or for trans­ac­tions between such coun­ter­parties.

¹ FINMA de­term­ines the de­riv­at­ives which must be traded via a trad­ing ven­ue or a trad­ing fa­cil­ity in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 112 para­graph 1. In so do­ing, it con­siders:

a.

their de­gree of leg­al and op­er­a­tion­al stand­ard­isa­tion;

b.

their li­quid­ity;

c.

their trad­ing volumes;

d.

the avail­ab­il­ity of pri­cing in­form­a­tion in the giv­en cat­egory;

e.

the coun­ter­party risks as­so­ci­ated with them.

² It shall take ac­count of re­cog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards and for­eign leg­al de­vel­op­ments. It may phase in the in­tro­duc­tion of the duty to trade via a trad­ing ven­ue or a trad­ing fa­cil­ity, ac­cord­ing to de­riv­at­ive cat­egory.

³ No duty to trade in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 112 may be im­posed for:

a.

de­riv­at­ives not ad­mit­ted to trad­ing by a rel­ev­ant trad­ing ven­ue or trad­ing fa­cil­ity;

b.

cur­rency swaps and for­ward trans­ac­tions, provided they are settled on a pay­ment versus pay­ment basis.

The duty to trade de­riv­at­ives in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 112 also ap­plies if the for­eign coun­ter­party of the Swiss coun­ter­party sub­ject to the duty would be sub­ject to the same duty if it had its re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land..

The duty to trade in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 112 does not ap­ply if:

a.

the two coun­ter­parties are in­cluded in the same full con­sol­id­a­tion basis;

b.

the two coun­ter­parties are sub­ject to ap­pro­pri­ate cent­ral­ised risk eval­u­ation, meas­ure­ment and con­trol pro­ced­ures; and

c.

the trans­ac­tions do not aim to cir­cum­vent the duty.

¹ The aud­it­ors in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 727 and 727a CO⁵⁰ shall veri­fy the coun­ter­parties' com­pli­ance with the pro­vi­sions of this chapter with­in the frame­work of their audits.

² The audit­ing of su­per­vised parties is gov­erned by the fin­an­cial mar­ket acts.

³ Pro­vi­sions on the su­per­vi­sion and over­all su­per­vi­sion of oc­cu­pa­tion­al old age, sur­viv­ors' and in­valid­ity pen­sion pro­vi­sion are re­served.

¹ The audit com­pan­ies of su­per­vised parties shall re­port to FINMA.

² The duty to no­ti­fy in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 728c para­graphs 1 and 2 CO⁵¹ ap­plies to aud­it­ors of non-su­per­vised parties in the event of in­fringe­ments with re­gard to du­ties un­der this chapter.

³ If the com­pany fails to take ap­pro­pri­ate meas­ures des­pite the aud­it­ors' no­ti­fic­a­tion, the aud­it­ors shall re­port the in­fringe­ments to the Fed­er­al De­part­ment of Fin­ance.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may in­tro­duce lim­its on the size of net po­s­i­tions which a per­son may hold in com­mod­ity de­riv­at­ives in­so­far as this is ne­ces­sary for or­derly pri­cing and set­tle­ment as well as for con­ver­gence between prices on the de­riv­at­ives mar­ket and on the un­der­ly­ing mar­ket. In do­ing so, it shall take ac­count of re­cog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards and leg­al de­vel­op­ments abroad.

² It gov­erns the fol­low­ing for po­s­i­tion lim­its:

a.

the cal­cu­la­tion of net po­s­i­tions;

b.

the ex­emp­tions for po­s­i­tions which are held for a non-fin­an­cial coun­ter­party and which serve to re­duce the risks dir­ectly as­so­ci­ated with its busi­ness activ­ity, li­quid­ity man­age­ment or as­set man­age­ment;

c.

the re­port­ing du­ties re­quired for the trans­par­ency of com­mod­ity de­riv­at­ives trad­ing.

³ FINMA shall set po­s­i­tion lim­its for the in­di­vidu­al com­mod­ity de­riv­at­ives.

¹ The trad­ing ven­ue shall su­per­vise open po­s­i­tions in or­der to en­force po­s­i­tion lim­its. It may re­quest each par­ti­cipant to:

a.

grant it ac­cess to all in­form­a­tion re­quired for en­for­cing the po­s­i­tion lim­its;

b.

li­quid­ate or re­duce po­s­i­tions if the po­s­i­tion lim­its have been ex­ceeded.

² Para­graph 1 ap­plies by ana­logy to op­er­at­ors of or­gan­ised trad­ing fa­cil­it­ies and their cli­ents.

¹ Any­one who dir­ectly or in­dir­ectly or act­ing in con­cert with third parties ac­quires or dis­poses of shares or ac­quis­i­tion or sale rights re­lat­ing to shares of a com­pany with its re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land whose equity se­cur­it­ies are lis­ted in whole or in part in Switzer­land, or of a com­pany with its re­gistered of­fice abroad whose equity se­cur­it­ies are mainly lis­ted in whole or in part in Switzer­land, and thereby reaches, falls be­low or ex­ceeds the thresholds of 3%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 33⅓%, 50% or 66⅔% of the vot­ing rights, wheth­er ex­er­cis­able or not, must no­ti­fy this to the com­pany and to the stock ex­changes on which the equity se­cur­it­ies are lis­ted.

² Fin­an­cial in­ter­me­di­ar­ies who ac­quire or dis­pose of shares or ac­quis­i­tion or sale rights on be­half of third parties are not sub­ject to this no­ti­fic­a­tion duty.

³ Any­one who has the dis­cre­tion­ary power to ex­er­cise the vot­ing rights as­so­ci­ated with equity se­cur­it­ies in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 is also sub­ject to the no­ti­fic­a­tion duty.

⁴ The fol­low­ing shall be deemed equi­val­ent to an ac­quis­i­tion or dis­pos­al:

a.

the ini­tial list­ing of equity se­cur­it­ies;

b.

the con­ver­sion of par­ti­cip­a­tion cer­ti­fic­ates or profit-shar­ing cer­ti­fic­ates in­to shares;

c.

the ex­er­cise of con­ver­sion or ac­quis­i­tion rights;

d.

changes in the share cap­it­al; and

e.

the ex­er­cise of sale rights.

⁵ All pro­ced­ures that can ul­ti­mately con­fer the vot­ing right to equity se­cur­it­ies also con­sti­tute an in­dir­ect ac­quis­i­tion. This does not ap­ply in the case of powers of at­tor­ney gran­ted solely for the pur­poses of rep­res­ent­a­tion at a gen­er­al meet­ing.

A group or­gan­ised pur­su­ant to an agree­ment or oth­er­wise must com­ply with the no­ti­fic­a­tion duty laid down in Art­icle 120 as a group and shall dis­close:

a.

its total hold­ings;

b.

the iden­tity of its mem­bers;

c.

the nature of the agree­ment;

d.

the rep­res­ent­a­tion.

If a com­pany or stock ex­change has reas­on to be­lieve that a share­hold­er is in vi­ol­a­tion of the no­ti­fic­a­tion duty, it shall in­form FINMA of such fact.

¹ FINMA shall is­sue pro­vi­sions on:

a.

the scope of the no­ti­fic­a­tion duty;

b.

the treat­ment of ac­quis­i­tion and dis­pos­al rights;

c.

the cal­cu­la­tion of vot­ing rights;

d.

the time frame with­in which the no­ti­fic­a­tion duty has to be ful­filled;

e.

the time frame with­in which a com­pany has to pub­lish changes to its own­er­ship struc­ture in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 120.

² FINMA may, for good cause, make pro­vi­sion for ex­emp­tions to or eas­ing of the no­ti­fic­a­tion or pub­lic­a­tion duty, par­tic­u­larly if the trans­ac­tions:

a.

are of a short-term nature;

b.

are not as­so­ci­ated with any in­ten­tion to ex­er­cise the vot­ing right; or

c.

are con­di­tion­al.

³ Any­one who in­tends to ac­quire se­cur­it­ies can ob­tain a rul­ing from FINMA as to wheth­er or not they will be sub­ject to the no­ti­fic­a­tion duty.

The com­pany must pub­lish the in­form­a­tion which it re­ceives in re­spect of changes in the vot­ing rights.

¹ The pro­vi­sions of this chapter and Art­icle 163 ap­ply to pub­lic takeover of­fers re­lat­ing to equity se­cur­it­ies of com­pan­ies (tar­get com­pan­ies):

a.

with their re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land whose equity se­cur­it­ies are at least partly lis­ted on a stock ex­change in Switzer­land;

b.

with their re­gistered of­fice abroad whose equity se­cur­it­ies are at least in part mainly lis­ted in Switzer­land.

² If both Swiss and for­eign law are sim­ul­tan­eously ap­plic­able to a pub­lic takeover of­fer, the pro­vi­sions of Swiss law may be re­lin­quished if:

a.

the ap­plic­a­tion of Swiss law would lead to a con­flict with the for­eign law; and

b.

the pro­tec­tion provided by the for­eign law to in­vestors is equi­val­ent to that provided by Swiss law.

³ Com­pan­ies may, pri­or to their equity se­cur­it­ies be­ing ad­mit­ted to of­fi­cial list­ing on a stock ex­change in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1, state in their art­icles of in­cor­por­a­tion that an of­fer­or shall not be bound by the ob­lig­a­tion to make a pub­lic takeover of­fer in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 135 and 163.

⁴ A com­pany may at any time ad­opt a pro­vi­sion in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 3 in its art­icles of in­cor­por­a­tion, provided that this does not pre­ju­dice the in­terests of share­hold­ers with­in the mean­ing of Art­icle 706 CO⁵².

¹ After con­sult­ing the stock ex­changes, FINMA shall ap­point a board for pub­lic takeover of­fers (Takeover Board). This Board shall con­sist of ex­pert rep­res­ent­at­ives of se­cur­it­ies firms, lis­ted com­pan­ies and in­vestors. The or­gan­isa­tion­al struc­ture and pro­ced­ures of the Takeover Board shall be sub­mit­ted to FINMA for ap­prov­al.

² The pro­vi­sions which are is­sued by the Takeover Board in ac­cord­ance with this Act shall re­quire the ap­prov­al of FINMA.

³ The Takeover Board shall check com­pli­ance with the pro­vi­sions ap­plic­able to pub­lic takeover of­fers in in­di­vidu­al cases.

⁴ It shall re­port to FINMA once a year on its activ­it­ies.

⁵ The Takeover Board may levy fees on the parties in­volved in takeover pro­ceed­ings. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall gov­ern the fees. In do­ing so, it shall take ac­count of the value of the trans­ac­tions and the de­gree of dif­fi­culty of the pro­ceed­ings.

⁶ The stock ex­changes shall bear the costs that are not covered by the fees.

¹ The of­fer­or must pub­lish the of­fer in a pro­spect­us con­tain­ing true and com­plete in­form­a­tion.

² The of­fer­or must treat all hold­ers of equity se­cur­it­ies of the same class equally.

³ The of­fer­or's du­ties shall ap­ply for all who act in con­cert with it.

¹ The of­fer­or shall, pri­or to pub­lic­a­tion, sub­mit the of­fer to an audit firm li­censed by the Fed­er­al Audit Over­sight Au­thor­ity in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 9a para­graph 1 AOA⁵³ or to a se­cur­it­ies firm for re­view.

² The re­view­ing en­tity shall check wheth­er the of­fer is in com­pli­ance with the law and the im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions.

The seller may with­draw a con­tract or res­cind an ex­ecuted sale if these were con­cluded or ex­ecuted on the basis of a pro­hib­ited of­fer.

¹ The of­fer­or must pub­lish the res­ult of the of­fer upon ex­piry of the of­fer peri­od.

² If the con­di­tions of the of­fer are met, the of­fer­or must ex­tend the of­fer peri­od for those hold­ers of shares and oth­er equity se­cur­it­ies who have not yet ac­cep­ted the of­fer.

The Takeover Board shall set out ad­di­tion­al pro­vi­sions re­lat­ing to:

a.

the an­nounce­ment of an of­fer pri­or to its pub­lic­a­tion;

b.

the con­tents and the pub­lic­a­tion of the pro­spect­us as well as the con­di­tions to which an of­fer can be sub­jec­ted;

c.

the rules of fair­ness ap­plic­able to pub­lic takeover of­fers;

d.

the re­view of the of­fer by an audit firm li­censed by the Fed­er­al Audit Over­sight Au­thor­ity in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 9a para­graph 1 AOA⁵⁴ or a se­cur­it­ies firm;

e.

the of­fer peri­od and any ex­ten­sion there­of, the con­di­tions un­der which the of­fer may be with­drawn or mod­i­fied and the peri­od with­in which a seller may with­draw;

f.

ac­tions in con­cert with third parties;

g.

its pro­ced­ures.

¹ The board of dir­ect­ors of the tar­get com­pany (Art. 125 para. 1) shall sub­mit a re­port to the hold­ers of equity se­cur­it­ies set­ting out its po­s­i­tion in re­la­tion to the of­fer. The in­form­a­tion in the re­port must be true and com­plete. The board of dir­ect­ors of the tar­get com­pany shall pub­lish the re­port.

² From the mo­ment the of­fer is pub­lished un­til the res­ult is an­nounced, the board of dir­ect­ors of the tar­get com­pany shall not enter in­to any leg­al trans­ac­tions which would have the ef­fect of sig­ni­fic­antly al­ter­ing the as­sets or li­ab­il­it­ies of the com­pany. De­cisions taken by the gen­er­al meet­ing of share­hold­ers are not sub­ject to this re­stric­tion and may be im­ple­men­ted ir­re­spect­ive of wheth­er they were ad­op­ted be­fore or after pub­lic­a­tion of the of­fer.

³ The Takeover Board shall is­sue pro­vi­sions on:

a.

the re­port to be is­sued by the board of dir­ect­ors of the tar­get com­pany;

b.

any meas­ures which are aimed in an im­prop­er man­ner at frus­trat­ing an of­fer or pre­vent­ing it from be­ing suc­cess­ful.

¹ In the event of com­pet­ing of­fers, the hold­ers of equity se­cur­it­ies in the tar­get com­pany must be free to choose which of­fer they ac­cept.

² The Takeover Board shall is­sue pro­vi­sions re­lat­ing to com­pet­ing of­fers and their ef­fect on the first of­fer.

¹ The of­fer­or or any­one who dir­ectly, in­dir­ectly or in con­cert with third parties holds a stake of at least 3% of the vot­ing rights, wheth­er ex­er­cis­able or not, of the tar­get com­pany or, as the case may be, of an­oth­er com­pany whose equity se­cur­it­ies are be­ing offered in ex­change must, from the time the of­fer is pub­lished un­til the ex­piry of the of­fer peri­od, no­ti­fy the Takeover Board and the stock ex­changes on which the se­cur­it­ies are lis­ted of any ac­quis­i­tion or dis­pos­al of equity se­cur­it­ies of such com­pany.

² A group or­gan­ised pur­su­ant to an agree­ment or oth­er­wise shall be sub­ject to this no­ti­fic­a­tion duty solely as a group.

³ The Takeover Board may sub­ject to the same duty any­one who, from the time the of­fer is pub­lished un­til the ex­piry of the of­fer peri­od, ac­quires or dis­poses of, dir­ectly, in­dir­ectly or act­ing in con­cert with third parties, a cer­tain per­cent­age of the equity se­cur­it­ies of the tar­get com­pany or of an­oth­er com­pany whose equity se­cur­it­ies are be­ing offered in ex­change.

⁴ If a com­pany or stock ex­change has reas­on to be­lieve that a share­hold­er is in vi­ol­a­tion of the no­ti­fic­a­tion duty, it shall in­form the Takeover Board of such fact.

⁵ The Takeover Board shall is­sue rules on the scope, form and time al­lowed for no­ti­fic­a­tion and on the per­cent­age rel­ev­ant for the ap­plic­a­tion of para­graph 3.

¹ Any­one who dir­ectly, in­dir­ectly or act­ing in con­cert with third parties ac­quires equity se­cur­it­ies which, ad­ded to the equity se­cur­it­ies already owned, ex­ceed the threshold of 33⅓% of the vot­ing rights of a tar­get com­pany, wheth­er ex­er­cis­able or not, must make an of­fer to ac­quire all lis­ted equity se­cur­it­ies of the com­pany. Tar­get com­pan­ies may raise this threshold to 49% of vot­ing rights in its art­icles of in­cor­por­a­tion.

² The price offered must be at least as high as the high­er of the fol­low­ing two amounts:

a.

the stock ex­change price;

b.

the highest price that the of­fer­or has paid for equity se­cur­it­ies of the tar­get com­pany in the pre­ced­ing twelve months.

³ If the tar­get com­pany has is­sued sev­er­al classes of equity se­cur­it­ies, there must be an ap­pro­pri­ate re­la­tion­ship among the prices offered for the vari­ous classes of equity se­cur­it­ies.

⁴ FINMA shall is­sue pro­vi­sions on the duty to make an of­fer. The Takeover Board shall have the right to put for­ward pro­pos­als.

⁵ If there are suf­fi­cient in­dic­a­tions that a per­son has not met the duty to make an of­fer, the Takeover Board may take the fol­low­ing meas­ures un­til the duty to make an of­fer has been cla­ri­fied or, as ap­pro­pri­ate, the duty to make an of­fer has been ful­filled:

a.

sus­pend the vot­ing rights and as­so­ci­ated rights of this per­son; and

b.

pro­hib­it this per­son from ac­quir­ing fur­ther shares or ac­quis­i­tion or dis­pos­al rights re­lat­ing to shares of the tar­get com­pany, be it dir­ectly, in­dir­ectly or act­ing in con­cert with third parties.

¹ In jus­ti­fied cases, the Takeover Board may grant ex­emp­tions from the duty to make an of­fer, par­tic­u­larly in the fol­low­ing cases:

a.

where the trans­fer of vot­ing rights oc­curs with­in a group or­gan­ised pur­su­ant to an agree­ment or oth­er­wise. In such a case, only the group as such shall be sub­ject to the duty to make an of­fer;

b.

where the threshold is ex­ceeded as a res­ult of a de­crease in the total num­ber of vot­ing rights of the com­pany;

c.

where the threshold is ex­ceeded only tem­por­ar­ily;

d.

where the se­cur­it­ies have been ac­quired without con­sid­er­a­tion or on ex­er­cise of pre-empt­ive rights pur­su­ant to a share cap­it­al in­crease;

e.

where the se­cur­it­ies have been ac­quired for re­or­gan­isa­tion pur­poses.

² The duty to make an of­fer does not ap­ply if the vot­ing rights have been ac­quired as a res­ult of a dona­tion, suc­ces­sion or par­ti­tion of an es­tate, mat­ri­mo­ni­al prop­erty law or ex­e­cu­tion pro­ceed­ings.

¹ An of­fer­or who holds more than 98% of the vot­ing rights of the tar­get com­pany on ex­piry of the of­fer peri­od may, with­in three months, pe­ti­tion the court to can­cel the out­stand­ing equity se­cur­it­ies. For this pur­pose, the of­fer­or must ini­ti­ate an ac­tion against the com­pany. The re­main­ing share­hold­ers may par­ti­cip­ate in these pro­ceed­ings.

² The com­pany shall re­is­sue such equity se­cur­it­ies and al­lot them to the of­fer­or either against pay­ment of the of­fer price or ful­fil­ment of the ex­change of­fer in fa­vour of the hold­ers of the equity se­cur­it­ies which have been can­celled.

¹ The Takeover Board shall is­sue the de­cisions ne­ces­sary for the en­force­ment of the pro­vi­sions of this chapter and its im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions and shall mon­it­or com­pli­ance with the stat­utory and reg­u­lat­ory pro­vi­sions. It may pub­lish the de­cisions.

² Per­sons and com­pan­ies sub­ject to a no­ti­fic­a­tion duty in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 134, and per­sons and com­pan­ies who are en­titled to party status in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 139 para­graphs 2 and 3 must provide all the in­form­a­tion and sur­render any doc­u­ments to the Takeover Board which the lat­ter re­quires to per­form its tasks.

³ If the Takeover Board be­comes aware of vi­ol­a­tions of the pro­vi­sions of this chapter or of oth­er ir­reg­u­lar­it­ies, it shall en­sure that an or­derly situ­ation is re­stored and that the ir­reg­u­lar­it­ies are remedied.

⁴ If the Takeover Board be­comes aware of any gen­er­al felon­ies or mis­de­mean­ours or in­fringe­ments of this Act, it shall promptly no­ti­fy the com­pet­ent pro­sec­u­tion au­thor­it­ies.

¹ Sub­ject to the fol­low­ing ex­emp­tions, the pro­ceed­ings of the Takeover Board are gov­erned by the pro­vi­sions of the Fed­er­al Act of 20 Decem­ber 1968⁵⁵ on Ad­min­is­trat­ive Pro­ced­ure.

² In pro­ceed­ings with re­gard to pub­lic takeover of­fers, the fol­low­ing have party status:

a.

the of­fer­or;

b.

the per­sons who act in con­cert with the of­fer­or; and

c.

the tar­get com­pany.

³ Share­hold­ers hold­ing at least 3% of the vot­ing rights of the tar­get com­pany, wheth­er ex­er­cis­able or not, also qual­i­fy as parties if they claim such status from the Takeover Board.

⁴ The stat­utory pro­vi­sions on leg­al hol­i­days do not ap­ply to pro­ceed­ings of the Takeover Board re­gard­ing pub­lic takeover of­fers.

⁵ The sub­mis­sion of leg­al doc­u­ments by fax or by elec­tron­ic means is per­mit­ted in cor­res­pond­ence with the Takeover Board and is re­cog­nised with re­gard to com­pli­ance with time lim­its.

¹ An ap­peal against de­cisions of the Takeover Board may be lodged with FINMA with­in a peri­od of five trad­ing days.

² The ap­peal must be made in writ­ing to FINMA and be sub­stan­ti­ated. In the event of an ap­peal, the Takeover Board will for­ward its files to FINMA.

³ Art­icle 139 para­graphs 1, 4 and 5 ap­ply to the pro­ceed­ing for ap­peals lodged with FINMA.

¹ An ap­peal against FINMA rul­ings re­gard­ing pub­lic takeover of­fers may be lodged with the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court in ac­cord­ance with the Fed­er­al Act of 17 June 2005⁵⁶ on the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court.

² The ap­peal must be lodged with­in ten days of no­ti­fic­a­tion of the de­cision. It has no sus­pens­ive ef­fect.

³ The stat­utory pro­vi­sions on leg­al hol­i­days do not ap­ply to pro­ceed­ings re­gard­ing pub­lic takeover of­fers be­fore the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court.

¹ Any per­son who has in­sider in­form­a­tion and who knows or should know that it is in­sider in­form­a­tion or who has a re­com­mend­a­tion that he or she knows or should know is based on in­sider in­form­a­tion shall be­have in­ad­miss­ibly when he or she:

a.⁵⁷

ex­ploits it to ac­quire or dis­pose of se­cur­it­ies ad­mit­ted to trad­ing on a trad­ing ven­ue or DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity which has its re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land or to use de­riv­at­ives of such se­cur­it­ies;

b.

dis­closes it to an­oth­er;

c.⁵⁸

ex­ploits it to re­com­mend to an­oth­er to ac­quire or dis­pose of se­cur­it­ies ad­mit­ted to trad­ing on a trad­ing ven­ue or DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity which has its re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land or to use de­riv­at­ives of such se­cur­it­ies.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall is­sue pro­vi­sions re­gard­ing the ad­miss­ible use of in­sider in­form­a­tion, in par­tic­u­lar in con­nec­tion with:

a.

se­cur­it­ies trans­ac­tions in pre­par­a­tion of a pub­lic takeover of­fer;

b.

a spe­cial leg­al status on the part of the re­cip­i­ent of the in­form­a­tion.

¹ A per­son be­haves in­ad­miss­ibly when he or she:

a.

pub­licly dis­sem­in­ates in­form­a­tion which he or she knows or should know gives false or mis­lead­ing sig­nals re­gard­ing the sup­ply, de­mand or price of se­cur­it­ies ad­mit­ted to trad­ing on a trad­ing ven­ue or DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity which has its re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land;

b.

car­ries out trans­ac­tions or ac­quis­i­tion or dis­pos­al or­ders which he or she knows or should know give false or mis­lead­ing sig­nals re­gard­ing the sup­ply, de­mand or price of se­cur­it­ies ad­mit­ted to trad­ing on a trad­ing ven­ue or DLT trad­ing fa­cil­ity which has its re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land.⁵⁹

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall is­sue pro­vi­sions re­gard­ing ad­miss­ible con­duct, in par­tic­u­lar in con­nec­tion with:

a.

se­cur­it­ies trans­ac­tions for price sta­bil­isa­tion pur­poses;

b.

buy­back pro­grammes for a com­pany's own se­cur­it­ies.